And Baby Makes Eight
by tielan
Summary: The curious tale of how the Avengers adopted Maria Hill and her daughter. [Avengers as family, kidfic, background Clint/Natasha, background Tony/Pepper, eventually Steve/Maria][COMPLETE 29th March, 2013]
1. Chapter 1

**And Baby Makes Eight **

**- Part I -**

It's Steve who finds Lieutenant Hill with her back pressed against the S.H.I.E.L.D. communications van and her arms wrapped around her waist.

"Lieutenant?" He thought she was looking wan before, but this looks dire.

"Go away, Captain. I'm fine."

"You don't look fine," he says, frank and unapologetic. Some sixth sense gets him out of the way before she bends over and vomits into the gutter. But he gets an arm around her waist. "I need a medic out here, Hill—"

"Is fine," she snaps over the communications channel. "No need for a medic."

"You know, I outrank you."

"And I don't need to be infantilised," she tells him bluntly as the support agents emerge from the communications van, their expressions anxious. "I'm fine – it was just a momentary nausea. Let's get back to the job at hand."

And without so much as a thank you, she goes back to work.

Steve still keeps an eye on her for the rest of the mission – she does look a bit peaky. But other than that, Lieutenant Hill discharges her duty with the precision and stern resolve that brought her to the notice of the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. at a relatively tender age.

Right up until the point where she's emerging from the van several hours later and has to grab hold of the door to stay upright.

Steve's across the street and scooping her up before she has time to protest. "This time, you're going to see a medic."

–

Clint walks into Maria's office at a time when he knows she'll be there and alone. He'd like a time when he can count on not being interrupted, but this is Hill. Her hands pause over her keyboard he comes in, and the query in her eyes turns wary as he shuts the door behind him.

"Okay," he says, leaning back against the door and folding his arms. "Is there a guy I have to kill for this? Because you broke up with the Black Ops guy three years ago, and I hadn't heard that there was anyone else since."

_She's not going to like it,_ Natasha warned him. _You don't have the right to dictate to her._

Clint doesn't plan to do any dictating. But he does need to know if there's a man who needs burying.

Maria tilts her head at him, exasperated. "What makes you think I want him dead?"

"You haven't mentioned a father."

"And if the father was in the picture, I'm quite capable of dealing with him."

"This is true." Clint cracks his knuckles and smirks. "But if so, I figured you might want assistance in hiding the body."

The smile is faint and rueful – and slightly bitter. "I don't need to hide his body. He died in the New York attack."

_Oh._ Guilt slashes across his gut, sharp as a knife. "Sorry." Intellectually he knows that, if not him, then someone else would have provided Loki with the information he needed to disable S.H.I.E.L.D. and let the Chitauri in. But that doesn't absolve him.

Maria sighs. "If you start self-flagellating, Barton, I'm going to have to kick your ass." She would, too, pregnant or not. And Clint would let her.

He squares his shoulders. He can't make it up to everyone who lost someone in the Chitauri invasion, and he can't apologise to Phil or bring him back, but he can do this. "So, since he's not here and I am, what do you need me to do?"

The blue stare studies him for a moment before she hunches, just a fraction. "You're not allowed to laugh."

Clint makes a cross over his heart, then puts his right hand up in the scouts' oath.

"I want a Bloomin' Onion and Chicken Quesadillas from the Outback Steakhouse. There's only stroganoff in the mess hall today."

"One Steakhouse run, coming right up."

One day he's a world-saving superhero, the next he's a glorified delivery boy. Clint reflects that this was never in the job description.

–

Maria isn't sure what to make of the interest the Avengers are taking in her pregnancy.

Clint is working out his guilt; but Maria thinks that anything which anchors him in the now is a good thing. The Avengers do a good job of that professionally, and Natasha is there for him personally. But Clint needs to be pointed at a target, or given a direction, a focus.

If that focus is going to be her child, then Maria figures she can live with that.

Natasha is concerned - curious, even. Maria avoids asking the expected question of Natasha, but makes sure that she's informed about all the stages of the pregnancy. It may not be in the Black Widow's plan for her life, but a baby was never in Maria's plans either.

But Clint and Natasha are S.H.I.E.L.D. and worked with her before.

The others are more problematic.

"What is this?" Maria stares at the dark pink soup that Rogers places in front of her.

"Borscht." Rogers puts another bowl down next to Miss Potts who glances up from her computer and smiles in thanks before going back to her reports. "Beetroot soup. At least try it."

Rogers has taken to modern cookery like a duck to water – he has a particular fondness for the farmers' markets, and when he's in residence at the Tower and not in training and re-skilling elsewhere, the communal fridge is overflowing with fresh produce.

Maria stares at it hungrily. It smells delicious, and she's had a near-constant nausea that makes it hard to eat anything. She can eat and keep it down, she's just not hungry. Which is a problem when she's supposed to be eating for two.

"I haven't poisoned it," Rogers says with a touch of asperity.

She glares at him but tries it.

Five minutes later, Rogers slides a second bowl under her nose with something that, in any other man, would be a smirk.

Thor is fascinated by human pregnancy - and all the more by the clash of roles that he perceives in Maria: fighter and Valkyrie (his word, not Maria's), and mother and nurturer. Asgardian women are most usually the latter, although Sif is quite definitely the former, which may cause interesting conflicts if she decides to take a husband or lover later in life and chooses to bear children.

Jane Foster reminds Thor that Maria isn't pregnant just so he can ask questions, and Thor is suitably apologetic at the intrusion, but he's still curious. And speculative when his gaze rests on Jane.

Maria makes a mental note to consult with the S.H.I.E.L.D. geneticists about whether a half-Asgardian child is even possible. In purely pragmatic terms, such a child could be of great benefit to Earth.

She may be pregnant, but she's still an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D..

The copy of 'What To Expect When You're Expecting' in Banner's lab is more worrying.

"Natasha left it in the reading room," is the excuse the scientist gives when Maria picks it up. He hunches a little as she flips through the pages, pausing where a clipped article about Dr. Betty Ross has been inserted as a bookmark in chapter three.

"Just as well I'm only up to chapter three in the pregnancy, too," she says dryly.

Banner blushes, but it gets him to sit down in the chair to discuss his plans for staying in New York when he's carrying the Hulk around in his mental back pocket. Fury isn't happy about this, and, honestly, neither is Maria. But she's not happy about the Avengers generally and they're her job.

So she sits down and discusses the options with Banner, pushing a little because someone needs to, and Fury does orders and interventions; he doesn't do people. And Banner doesn't lose his temper, although he gives her more than a few hard looks, and Maria doesn't like the hard looks much, but she likes it better than facing the Hulk.

When Stark starts suggesting baby names, though, Maria has this urge to look outside and check if it's raining donuts.

Of course, he _is_ asking her to name the child after _him_, which is exactly what she'd expect of Stark.

"So having Anthony become the most popular boy's name in the US in the last year isn't enough for you?"

"I don't know all those babies," Stark says, looking very reasonable, "Although I've kissed a few. I'm just suggesting that, as names go, you could do worse than 'Anthony.'"

"Stark, I'm not going to saddle my child with the name Anthony Hill." At his blank look, Maria sighs. "Ant Hill?"

–

Maria wakes in darkness and dust and an odd musky smell.

Her hand is already on the shirt stretched tight over the bump of her child, instinctive terror and protectiveness rising in her. She feels the baby nudge against her hand and presses lightly back - reassurance for both of them.

Her last memory is heading back to the utility she commandeered to drive into the underground parking space and break open an emergency exit door so the people trapped inside could get out. Stark was yelling something about the building stability because the Hulk was holding it up, but there was nobody else free to get those people out.

Something is breathing in the closed space with her, rough rasping through large lungs.

Her heart starts pounding. "Banner?"

"Ceiling fall. Hulk stop."

Maria swallows, her mouth dry as she tells herself to stay calm. She's buried under a building with the Hulk; panicking is not going to make things better. Still, it takes her two tries to get her voice working. "Thank you, Hulk."

"Baby good?"

"It's not going anywhere," Maria says wryly.

She feels the careful movement in the shifting currents of the air in their pocket and so doesn't flinch when a giant hand brushes her distended belly with what must be the most delicate of touches for the Hulk.

"Hulk protect," he announces with satisfaction.

It's at that moment, fighting horror and the desire to laugh hysterically, that Maria realises she and her child have been adopted by the Avengers - _all _of them.

–

Clint goes pale, his eyes suddenly hunted. "You want me to be your partner in the birth classes?"

"It's you or Fury," Maria tells him, and lets that thought settle in his brain before she smiles pleasantly. "So?"

–

Philippa Carmelita Hill is born at five minutes past midnight on January 3rd, while the Avengers are attending to a crisis in San Francisco. To say the midwife is somewhat surprised to emerge from the delivery room to a waiting room full of superheroes is an understatement.

"A worthy name," Thor rumbles when they're told the baby's name.

"Philippa..." Clint sounds like he's tasting the name. "I guess Pippa works for short."

Stark beams, slightly exhausted from the San Francisco crisis and more than a little punch-drunk. "I think we should drink to that."

"You just want an excuse to have a drink," Banner remarks, rebuttoning his shirt so the buttons go in the right holes this time.

"I need an excuse?"

Steve addresses the nurse. "How's Maria- Agent- Ms. Hill doing?"

Natasha doesn't bother waiting, she slips past the stunned crowd of hospital staff and into the delivery room where the curtains are drawn around the bed, and Fury is massaging his hand back to life. "Agent Romanoff."

"Director." She doesn't betray her surprise at finding him here. Granted, Clint wasn't able to make it - and he's both relieved and cursing himself for missing it - but Director Fury? "How are they?"

Fury indicates the curtain and she pauses outside it.

"Maria?"

"Oh God. Tell me they're not all here."

Natasha ducks in. "They're out in the waiting room. It's just me."

Birth is always a bloody, messy thing – as compared to death, which can be quiet, noisy, neat, chaotic, and every adjective in between. But at the end of the process of birthing, there's usually life – a new beginning, a new hope.

Maria looks exhausted but triumphal as the little, scrunched up thing beats at her breast and sucks for all she's worth.

"San Francisco still standing?"

"Most of it."

Usually Natasha would use this moment to give a more detailed report. Of course, she doesn't usually give reports at hospital bedsides to nursing mothers.

There's nothing 'usual' about this at all.

Except for everything that is.

Natasha doesn't know much about babies, but this one looks healthy enough. She hesitates with one finger above the tiny cheek and wonders that it's so _small_. And beautiful. Somehow, she didn't think it – _she_ – would be beautiful. Which is...stupid? Naïve? Foolish?

"She's lovely."

"Everything's where it should be according to the doctors."

Natasha's mouth twitches. The response is so very Maria. She strokes a finger across the baby's downy cheek.

"Philippa."

Maria half-smiles. "Maudlin, isn't it?"

"No, no, it's good. It's right." The sigh gusts out of her, thinking of the man Philippa was named for. "Phil would be honoured."

–

Sometime after midday on the 3rd, Fury regains the feeling in his right hand.

**tbc**


	2. Chapter 2

**NOTES:** I guess the best way to describe how this fic is going to work is "cute with consequences". However I promise it has a happy ending when you get there. :)

**And Baby Makes Eight**

- **Part II** -

Within forty-eight hours, Pippa is known to the staff at the hospital as 'the superhero baby', and there's a betting pool as to which one of the Avengers is the father. Maria doesn't tell Natasha that she's also in the nominations to be father – because of _course_ a woman as martially skilled as Natasha must really be a man underneath.

"Nat probably already knows," Clint remarks, trying to get Pippa to follow his finger as Maria's stepmother confirms a few last things with the nurses. "Is there something wrong with her eyes?"

"Other than that she can't see a fly on a horse's ass at five miles? No. She won't be focusing on anything further away than a foot for another few weeks yet." Maria's not sure _she'll_ have the energy to focus on anything more than Pippa for a couple of weeks yet. As it turns out, 'baby brain' is neither a metaphor or an excuse.

"Oh." He tucks his hands in his pockets and sticks his face in Pippa's. "Is this close enough?"

Pippa answers him by punching him in the cheekbone.

"She's got a good right hook on her - rather like her mom. Oh, and just so you know, Stark's trying to persuade Thor that he should be the baby's godparent."

"Over my dead body."

"Yeah, I figured that would be the case."

–

"You want to put a _daycare_ on my helicarrier?"

"Sir, I _want_ fewer people cooing over her as I work. I'll settle for a daycare on the helicarrier and a better work-life balance."

Nick raises his eyebrows at her as he jiggles a burbling baby in his arms. Pippa Hill is a cheerful, uncomplicated child, unlike her mother. "You had a work-life balance before, Lieutenant?"

–

Natasha has never considered herself maternal.

Which leaves her at a loss to explain why she detoured over to the 'nursery' to play with Pippa when she really should be up and reviewing the information on several multinationals that are working on supersoldier projects.

"There's something positively magnetic about her, isn't there?" Pepper says from the doorway. "I rarely have to ask JARVIS where Tony is anymore."

Natasha covers her expression, more out of instinct than because she doesn't trust Pepper. Pippa turns at the new voice and beams a gummy grin in Pepper's direction, still arching her back and practising straightening her knees as Natasha holds her around the waist.

Maria calls it 'planking'.

Whatever it is, Pippa does it every time someone tries to seat her in their lap. No sitting down for this child; she wants to be up and about, doing things, seeing people, learning about the world.

Rather like her mother, Natasha reflects. Maria hasn't let motherhood slow her down one bit, and some of the most entertaining moments of the last six months have come from the agents who thought that motherhood might soften 'Hardass Hill'.

"Maria says she's a shameless flirt. Always smiling for the guys."

"I'd say she knows which side her bread is buttered," Pepper said, putting her briefcase down against the coffee table before seating herself beside Natasha on the couch. "You're a clever one, aren't you?"

The gummy grin appears again, along with a little clutching hand that tries to reach for Pepper's necklace - a diamond that costs more than Maria makes in a month at S.H.I.E.L.D..

"No, Pippa." Pepper pulls open one of the wicker drawers in the base of the coffee table and drags out a plush Hulk toy. "Have a Hulk instead."

Pippa's expression makes it quite clear she knows she's being placated and she doesn't like it, but she takes the Hulk and starts gnawing on his hair.

"Such an uncomplicated life," Pepper says, smiling.

Natasha thinks of her own childhood in the Red Room – the endless hours of training and stress, the lessons, the punishments, the treatments... Not something she'd ever wish for Pippa, and definitely not something Maria would ever allow. Although when Pippa gets bigger, there's no reason she can't be taught some of the moves. A girl should always know how to defend herself, even if she never needs to use it.

"I wouldn't want her to have a complicated life."

"That's true," Pepper says after a moment's hesitation. Doubtless, she's thinking of her own background – a drunk father, an abused mother, a girl who refused to let old bruises decide her future, and a woman who held out against Tony Stark for the better part of ten years because, in spite of her past – or perhaps because of it, she knew she deserved better than the man Stark used to be.

Maria's own childhood was not exactly idyllic, either.

They're all the children of their parents. In Pippa's case this could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the view one takes of motherhood.

Privately, Natasha thinks Maria's doing well.

Pippa tires of playing with the Hulk toy and tosses it away with a scream that should shatter eardrums. Then she resumes planking like her life depends on it.

"At least this one will never lack someone to spoil her." Natasha says. "Want to hold her?"

Pepper laughs as Pippa kicks out vigorously, annoyed at losing her platform for planking. "Sure. I've finished all my meetings for the day. Come to Aunt Pepper, sweetie."

Natasha hands Pippa over but doesn't get up, although she really should go and review those supersoldier projects. It's more fun to sit here and watch Pippa place her hands against Pepper's cheeks and grin mischievously as she squishes hard. Not a sight that any shareholder would ever imagine seeing: the inimitable Pepper Potts having her face squished by a six month old girl who's blowing a spit bubble with careless abandon.

"You know—" Pepper tilts her head back so Pippa can't reach her any more, and then has to catch Pippa's hand as the little opportunist goes for the diamond again. "I always forget that I need to take off all my jewellery before holding her. I don't get to hold her very often. Tony always seems to turn up and take her away – he says he doesn't want me getting clucky."

"And?"

Pepper laughs. "At my age? It's not likely. Not that I wouldn't—I mean it's not as though we've—" She takes a deep breath, and squares her shoulders. "Tony has parental issues, and so do I. So it's probably for the best. Although sometimes I think he just takes her away because he wants to hold her. No, Pippa," she says as Pippa tries once more to get the sparkly thing in her mouth. "No! Oh, God, look at that pout!"

But the tears are crocodile tears, and once Pippa realises they'll get her nowhere she sniffles and settles for the string of beads that Natasha uses to distract her attention, although the look she gives them is disgusted that they think she'd settle for mere plastic.

"She'll be a handful and a half when she's older. Remind me to make sure Tony doesn't get her a diamond for her first birthday. Or her eighth."

"Would he?" The instant Natasha asks the question, she knows Stark would – and wouldn't think twice about it. "Maria would probably just sell it and put it in a college education fund."

"Something else not to mention around Tony. Billionaire industrialist, Iron Man, has an ARC reactor instead of a heart, and goes gooey for a pair of big blue eyes and someone who pulls his beard."

"If it's any comfort I caught Fury making 'goo-goo' noises at Pippa in the helicarrier daycare the other day."

"Oh God, no, that's _not _comforting! Although..." Pepper glances towards the door and lowers her voice. "I found the Hulk holding Pippa the other day in Bruce's lab. She was asleep and he was just sitting and holding her, but..."

But the Hulk is not exactly the babysitter one wants for a six month old child.

Then again, Natasha reflects that an internationally known assassin is probably not anyone's first choice as the carer of a infant, either.

"I still can't decide if it's funny or terrifying," Pepper murmurs as Pippa beams through a mouthful of beads. "Earth's Mightiest Heroes wrapped around the pinkie of a six month old girl."

–

Maria waits until the initial fuss about the memorial has died down.

She puts in for leave, takes Pippa out of the daycare, and sends out a helicarrier-wide email that Pippa will not be in the daycare this afternoon. Last month, she made the mistake of leaving Pippa at home with her stepmom and youngest brother Paul for the day instead of bringing her in to work. The first fifteen minutes of her day was spent fielding emails from people who were worried that Pippa was sick or that Maria had, perhaps, just left her daughter on a street corner somewhere for baby collection.

"I told Fury not to assign any tails," she tells Pippa, who's fussing with the frilly knitted cap someone made for her. "We'll see if he complies."

Most people come to see the memorial sculpture, and the fountain is crowded with tourists taking photos of the Avengers as they stand over a snarling Chitauri. Nobody mentions Loki or his little performance in Berlin in these things anymore, because alien-looking aliens are okay to demonise, but photogenic sons of Asgard - however adopted or fallen - are sacrosanct.

Maria walks past the fountain to the roll of names - only a thousand or so, almost nothing when compared with 9/11 or with what could have happened if not for the Avengers.

"But even the Avengers can't save everyone," she murmurs into her daughter's downy-soft hair as she stands in front of the roll of names. "As both your daddy and your Uncle Phil are proof."

She doesn't waste time wondering what might have been if Pippa's father had lived. After all, it was only their second time together when the condom broke. Then he was killed when a Chitauri crashed in his office floor and knocked him out the thirty-second floor as he played possum, giving his colleagues time to get to the emergency stairs.

"He didn't have to be an Avenger to be a hero," she whispers to Pippa. "None of us do."

–

"She's looking at me. She's looking directly at me and smiling. Who's a clever girl?"

Across the grass, Clint exchanges a look of exasperation with Natasha, whose distinctive hair is today hidden under a dark wig. "Newsflash, Stark: she can't hear you."

–

Bruce settles into the sofa with his cola and watches the showdown. Iron Man vs. the Norse God of Thunder. Who will win?

"I'd have thought it was obvious," Tony says in unapologetic tones as he pours himself a drink. "She's trying to say 'Stark'."

"Da!"

"See?"

Thor's brow lowers, stern and imposing in a frown - or maybe it's a pout? "You are incorrect. It is quite clearly _my_ name she is speaking. Say 'Thor', Pippa!"

"Da!"

"Aha—There! You see!" Thor brushes a finger past Pippa's cheek – a finger which she promptly grabs and tugs into her mouth. Or, more correctly, is _allowed_ to tug into her mouth since Thor is, well, _Thor_.

"She's teething," Steve explains, still jiggling Pippa as she gums up Thor's finger. "Not giving your mom any time to sleep, either, are you?"

The doe-eyed look Pippa gives him suggests it's not only her right to make her mom's life hell, but her _responsibility_ to do so.

"I'd ask how you know my sleeping patterns, Rogers," says Maria as she strides into the room, "but I don't think I want to know."

"You look tired and she's teething." Tony says, while Steve blushes all the way down his shirt collar. "Seems pretty obvious to me."

"Mama!" Pippa squeals, letting go of Thor's finger and leaning across Steve's arm with her arms outstretched towards her mom. "Mamamamamama!"

"Hey, baby. Ready to go home?"

"Da!"

"Maybe it's Russian," Bruce suggests at the same time as Tony says, "You could stay for dinner."

Thor, meanwhile, has the earlier discussion on his mind. "There is a debate as to whether she is referring to Stark or myself when she says 'Da'."

"She calls everything 'Da' right now." Maria sounds a little distracted as she watches Steve play 'swipe the nose' with her daughter. "But Natasha's begun speaking to her in Russian, so she might have picked it up. I can't stay for dinner, Stark, because I don't have any food for her here."

"_In fact, Lieutenant, w__e have a selection of Miss Pippa's favourite foods in the common pantry,_" JARVIS announces. "_I took the liberty of ordering some after the last time you were here._"

"Da!" Pippa squeals, her hands lifted to the ceiling in delight. "Da! Da! Da! Da! Da!"

"_I have specially catered for you, Miss Pippa,_" says JARVIS. "_Dinner will not be a problem._"

It should not be possible for an AI to sound fatuous or smug. JARVIS manages both. Tony glares up at the ceiling, Steve hastily hides a smile, and Thor looks flabbergasted.

Maria, on the other hand, looks mostly resigned to the insanity that is her life with a one year-old who has not only charmed the Avengers, but appears to have wrapped Tony Stark's AI's circuits around her little finger, too.

Bruce sits back on the couch and laughs until his sides ache.

**tbc**


	3. Chapter 3

**NOTES**: In which some things fall apart, and some things come together, and some things go unsaid, and some things are understood...

**And Baby Makes Eight**

- **Part III** -

Steve doesn't even realise where he's headed until he's in the room, looking at the monitor.

Some wit has stuck a label across the top of the screen since the last time Steve was here. It reads 'THE BABY CHANNEL'.

Another time, he might smile at it.

Not today.

"_A word, Captain._" At least she waited until they were out of earshot of the rest of the troops. "_You do __**not**__ challenge my authority on my turf among my people._"

"_Then don't blow up my friends_!"

Her lips thinned. "_Your friend survived a bullet in his mouth and a fall from the helicarrier at thirty thousand feet. He is classified as a walking natural disaster. So far as we can tell, the Hulk is indestructible, and because his existence relies on Dr. Banner, so, too, is Dr. Banner._"

"_And the men and women who were still in that facility when it was blown?_" Steve demanded, his gut churning as he glanced back at the smoking ruin of what had been a research facility. "_What about them?_"

"_They knew the risks working in the facility_." Her expression was grim. "_They played Russian roulette with alien space bugs and they lost_."

Behind Steve, the door opens. "I thought I'd find you here."

Bruce comes to stand alongside Steve, his eyes also on the security feed.

"You okay?"

"Mostly singed and angry."

Steve gives him a look over. "You're holding it well."

Banner's smile is thin. "_I'm_ still angry. The other guy _isn't_." Before Steve can questions such an extraordinary statement, he asks, "You?"

"I'm dealing."

They watch as Pippa toddles over and tries to climb into her mother's lap, turning to put her hands on the Lieutenant's cheeks so she can chirp something in the baby language she's developed in the last two months. A faint smile touches Maria's lips as she says something back to Pippa.

There's no sound on the video feed, but Steve can almost hear her voice - soft with a tenderness that defies all expectations of Lieutenant Hill and goes straight to the heart of a mother.

"She let those people die." Steve lets the words hang in the air. He needs to say it to someone and Bruce saw what happened. "She gave the order to detonate the facility. There were agents in there. People she knew. People who had kids like Pippa."

The agent in charge of the facility - Jerry Stone, a good man - had a daughter just about Pippa's age. Pippa gets Maria home safe and sound tonight; Stone's daughter will never see her father again.

"You're wondering how could she do that?"

"Yeah." In the daycare, the toddler tucks her head into her mom's neck, still chattering with the syllables that mean nothing in adult-speak. Something about the smile turns bitter, and then the Lieutenant closes her eyes and her lips move, sharp and crisp – an order.

The Baby Channel blanks out.

"What-?!"

"I'd say the Lieutenant wants privacy," Bruce says, but he doesn't move away from the now-blank feed. "As to what she did... She did it because someone had to make the hard call and she had lives depending on her. Expediency isn't heroic, Steve."

"Is that why the other guy isn't angry?"

"We're the Avengers, Steve. We're supposed to be heroes – we make the play and save the day. And spout bad poetry on the way." Bruce's smile is sardonic at the whimsical tail-end of his comment. "But someone has to make the choices and be damned for it."

"And it has to be her?"

"That's what her position entails."

Steve understands in his head. But it feels like she gutted him, and he doesn't know why. No, actually, he does. He thought she was different to Fury – that people weren't just numbers to be subtracted from the account, weren't just pieces to be bloodlessly played.

He should have known better.

_They played Russian roulette with alien space bugs and lost._

How could he be so wrong?

"She turned off the video feed," Bruce says after a moment, stepping over to the next terminal. "She hasn't cut the recording. The carrier systems are set up so you can't eliminate any of the recordings without the appropriate authorisations. Which she certainly has, but which she can't initiate until she's at a secure terminal..."

A few taps of the keyboard, and the visual on the next screen over switches from a barely-populated corridor to the scene that vanished from the Baby Channel screen a minute ago.

Nothing much has changed. Lieutenant's eyes are still closed and her expression is still bleak and bitter. But something about the look on her face... Pippa's head snuggles into her mom's neck and a tiny hand comes up to pat her mom's jaw, unaware of the burdens adults must carry, only knowing that her mom needs comfort.

Steve looks away. It's not right to watch this. Agree or disagree with her actions, she deserves the privacy of her choices. "Turn it off."

Another keystroke and the screen goes back to a corridor. And Bruce tilts his head at Steve. "I wouldn't have done it. And neither would you. Maybe that's why we're Avengers and she's not."

He still feels eviscerated.

–

Clint looks up a little guiltily as the door opens, but it's just Thor, looking grim, although his expression softens when he sees Pippa.

"Lady Pippa."

"Dor!" She waves a block at him.

Clint waits until the door closes behind Thor. "How's Stark?"

"He is well in body. His spirit... That will take longer to heal." Thor sets Mjolnir down by the door and sits down on the carpet, having learned not to stand on dignity when it comes to Pippa's play spaces. "Rogers and Banner and Lieutenant Hill are with him now."

"Competition, comfort, and conflict." Clint watches Pippa bang coloured wooden blocks together and figures he's on babysitting duty a little longer. It could be worse. At least she's an actual baby. "I guess that's one way to do it."

"Will he recover?"

Clint hesitates before answering. It's private, but they're team, and Thor has a right to know the weaknesses in Stark. "S.H.I.E.L.D.'s initial psychological assessment of Tony Stark as a possible operative was that his emotional stability relied on three things: the Iron Man suit, Colonel Rhodes, and Pepper. Without them he crashes and burns. Fairly spectacularly."

"Not an encouraging assessment."

"No." Clint doesn't sugar coat it. Still... "Things have changed though. He has the Avengers now. And Pippa. That might make the difference."

As though sensing she's being spoken of, Pippa looks up, and throws her block. Hurls it, actually, overarm - just as Clint's been teaching her to do. It goes down rather than up, but it still goes pretty far. For a one year old.

"An excellent throw, Lady Pippa," Thor says approvingly. "Has Clint been teaching you?"

Clint shrugs as Pippa beams. "It's never too young to start working on the hand-eye co-ordination." He glances around, as though expecting to find Maria standing there. "Just don't tell Maria I said that."

–

When Maria walks out into the flight deck and finds the Avengers' Quinjet waiting, she's tempted to turn on her heel and walk right back into the helicarrier.

What stops her is the person waiting for her inside.

"Lieutenant Hill."

"Ms. Potts." Of all the people Maria expected to see at this moment, Pepper Potts is very far down on the list. "_You're_ here to escort me to the Tower?"

"I'm not back with Tony, if that's what you're asking."

"I never thought you were." Maria doesn't know the reasons behind Pepper's decision to break up with Tony Stark, and doesn't care. She's sorry for Stark, but she thinks that Pepper was wise to get out, too.

Pippa is set down so Maria can pull out the baby chair that's stored in the locker under 'Pippa's seat'. Meanwhile, her daughter toddles over to Pepper and chatters a greeting at her in the language she's developed that occasionally bears a passing resemblance to English.

It takes them a few minutes to strap Pippa in the baby chair. She's done this flight enough that she knows what's coming - the pressure changes in her ears, the discomfort. She doesn't like it at all, but she's learned that there's something at the end - home and dinner and toys to play with.

Tonight, there's going to be dinner and toys - both the plastic and the living kind - but no home. Their home - such as it was - is now a pile of rubble in the neighbourhood, thanks to the latest attack on the city.

Maria's plan was to be dropped off upstate at her stepmom's. It was out of her way, and would have turned her stomach to stay under that roof again - even if the cause of those memories was dead these last two years - but she would have done it for Pippa. To have somewhere to call home, even if it was only temporary.

She should have expected Stark's interference.

But Pepper Potts? That portends something more than merely a trip to Avengers Tower.

Maria waits to ask until they're up in the air and Pippa's whimpers have changed to talking to herself as she munches on the small apple Maria's given her. Maria doesn't cut up the apple for her daughter. Eating it whole requires more chewing, yes, but it's also good fibre. "Why are you here?"

Pepper folds her hands in her lap and looks her in the eye. "Because Tony's made Pippa his legal heir."

The words don't register for a second. When they do, Maria isn't sure she's heard right. "What?"

"In the event of death or mental incapacity, Anthony Stark's share of interest in Stark Industries, Stark Technologies - including the Iron Man suit, and any technology related to the Avengers Initiative, as well as the bulk of his personal estate, falls to one Philippa Carmelita Hill, to be administered jointly by Pepper Potts, Maria Hill, James Rhodes, and the founding members of the Avengers until she comes of age."

She hears the words but they mean...things that Maria can't encompass in her present state of mind or body. Anger and disbelief buzz in her chest. Is this a hoax? A joke? Why would Pepper put this on her now when everything else is in flux? What possessed Stark do such a thing?

"Why?"

"I gave up asking 'why' when it came to Tony many years ago."

"You know him better than anyone on or off the planet. Make an educated guess."

The answer is a while in coming, as Pepper seems to fight an internal war with herself. Now that she's had a minute to process the news, Maria has her own suspicions as to why Stark has done this. Working with the Avengers has given her new perspective on Stark's mindset and motivations, but she wants to hear Pepper's opinion. And she's not above collecting whatever information Pepper betrays during the explanation.

"Materially, Tony has nearly everything a person can want in this world. Physically, his life is dependent on the ARC reactor and the range of his skills are dependent on the Iron Man prosthetic. Emotionally..." Pepper meets Maria's gaze straight on, cool and composed. "Psychologically and emotionally, Tony struggles. He anchors himself with his work and with the people closest to him - initially Rhodey, myself, and Happy, but now the Avengers, too - particularly Bruce and Steve."

"And my daughter."

"And Pippa." Pepper smiles briefly over at Pippa, who has viciously ringbarked the peel off the apple and is now gnawing at the softer flesh inside. "Tony likes giving things to the people he cares about."

Stark Industries to Pepper. Stark Tower to the Avengers.

And now every pie he has a finger in to Pippa.

"The short of the matter is that your daughter is one of the people he cares about, and he wants to leave her something."

"And he couldn't just go for a college education fund?"

But Maria understands. Loki was right: the Avengers _are_ lost creatures - all of them. They're good people, but they've all been broken and remade - from Tony Stark to Steve Rogers. And Stark is more broken than most. He's known for his philanthropy, charm, and intelligence, but beneath that lies a need to give to people who will accept it - not as charity, just as a gift. The best that Stark has to give of himself - the only thing that he feels he's truly worthy of giving.

"This is not the life I want for her," she says, looking down at the dark little head and the intent little face. "I don't want her thinking this is normal."

"Her mom goes to work on a flying warship," Pepper points out, rather more gently than Maria expects coming from the woman who was, for a while, Tony Stark's fiancée. "She gets sung lullabies by the Hulk, and does crayon drawings with Captain America. Exactly which part of her life is normal?"

Maria doesn't answer, because the answer she can feel bubbling inside her is not one she's going to say to Pepper Potts.

She knows the psychology of Tony Stark. What disturbs her is the psychology of her own head.

The truth is that Maria has always anticipated rejection.

Accustoming herself to being the unwanted one has been a lifelong effort; the lingering belief that no matter who takes her on, ultimately she'll only ever be cast off again.

She petitioned for the daycare on the helicarrier because she knew what happened to the women who left S.H.I.E.L.D. to have babies. The only way to work it, she saw, was to integrate her daughter into the helicarrier from day one. To put it right there in everyone's faces; to draw people into the idea that a mother could also be a fighter, a warrior, ruthless, cold if she had to be, tender when her child needed her.

To some degree, it's worked. But Maria knows the gossip, knows the murmurs and the rumours. She knows what's expected of her as a mother and what's expected of her as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, and since she's perfect at neither, there are some who would say she's failed at both.

_Do you even have a heart?_

Maria shuts those words away; their poison has seeped in over months, but she can forget about it most of the time.

She's always made choices she would rather not have made. She knows that a woman in her position is easily dismissed or disdained. She knows that her daughter is cute and adorable now but won't always be.

When the Avengers first started taking an interest in Pippa, Maria made herself think of it as a phase. Someday, she imagined, the Avengers would get tired of her daughter. Perhaps when Pippa started to make her own decisions and go her own way, no longer cute and adorable. When Pippa became an individual and not merely a little live doll.

Maria has always known the truth of the world: that a woman is only considered 'good' or 'worthy' as long as she lets herself be what others expect her to be. Break out of that role and the world judges a woman half as soon and twice as harshly while rejecting her as 'worthy'.

The world giveth and the world taketh away. As it has been, so it shall be.

It's less about the definition of 'normal' and more about Maria protecting her daughter from that pain and disappointment of rejection as long as possible and teaching her to rely on herself - and Maria when she needs to.

She could hate Stark for doing this to her - to her daughter, to the independence she's trying to teach Pippa: trust yourself, don't rely on others, don't lean on others because they won't be there for you when you need them. Stark is nothing if not capricious. What happens when he decides he doesn't want Pippa to be his heir anymore? What if he fathers a child on some woman and then wants to change his will?

Oh, God, what kind of shitstorm is Maria going to have to ride out when it comes out that Stark's willed his estate to her daughter? She and Pippa have stayed well out of the gossip mags that have sprung up about the Avengers - nobody's interested in a military liaison - but this will propel them firmly into the limelight.

"I think," Pepper says quietly, "that you might have to accept that Pippa's life is not going to be normal any more than yours is."

Maria lets the issue stand at the definition of 'normal'. Explaining otherwise would take too much time.

There's no getting around it, and trying to argue with Stark is like trying to make the sun come up in the west. But if Stark is going to change Pippa's life, Maria's going to take out insurance against the day he changes his mind.

"I want a trust fund for Pippa," she says bluntly. "Separate to whatever she gets from the will. In her name, administered by myself or my executors, to be hers when she's eighteen. Five million dollars."

"Only five?

"I wouldn't want to be greedy, even on Pippa's behalf."

"He won't change his mind, you know. Or, if he does, there'll be a provision for her."

"Maybe." Maria would rather not take that risk, and Pepper sighs.

"Very well. I'll send you the paperwork for the account, and have the lawyers send you the details of the will. Have your lawyers read it through and get back to me on any points they have. It's made and witnessed and fairly straightforward, but you might want some explanation on some of the clauses."

They're coming up to Avengers Tower now, and Pippa's nearly finished her apple. Maria takes the core away from her, shushes the tears, and waits for landing.

Tonight she and Pippa will stay in the nursery at Avengers Tower. Pippa will bask in the attention from the guys - Natasha is off working a S.H.I.E.L.D. operation down in New Zealand - leaving Maria the time to take stock and work out what they have now and what they need to go forward.

And just what this bequest from Stark really means for them.

And later tonight, after the Avengers have fussed, and JARVIS has sung Pippa to sleep, when her daughter's in her cot, dreaming the dreams of the young and oblivious, Maria will stand by the cot and let the tenderness and terror take her.

Because the truth is that Maria wanted the daycare for herself - for the convenience of _her_ life and _her_ work. But today, that daycare saved her daughter's life.

–

Upon her return from the Bay of Islands, Natasha opens the door to Maria and Pippa's suite and finds the Hulk playing horsie while a little girl giggles madly atop his neck, her fingers clenched in his hair.

That evening on her way up to Clint's quarters, she finds Bruce already in the elevator. "Pippa's newest game?"

"Uh, yes." He goes bright pink, which is somewhat better than green. "She's been watching the My Little Pony cartoons and figured that I would oblige her."

"Hulk Pony?"

"Mention it to Stark and I will have to kill you."

–

The wind off the city streets portends the rain that will fall later tonight. Thor can smell it on the air.

He glances back as the door of the balcony opens and Stark emerges with a glass in one hand and a tankard in the other. "I'm exhausted. I don't know how Hill does it every night."

"With a will of iron and a mother's love," Thor says, accepting the tankard. Good strong mead - the best of Earth's brewings, although lacking the kick of the Asgardian meads. "She is busy tonight?"

"Checking out apartments. I told her she didn't need to, but she insisted..."

"She is still looking for somewhere else to live?"

"There's a big shortage of good housing in New York right now."

Thor regards his friend. "And you would have nothing to do with that?"

"It's not my fault her apartment building was one of the ones that got levelled in the attack."

"But you are not making it easier for her to find an alternative." Thor knows Tony Stark - understands his cunning and his cleverness. In many things, Stark is much like Loki and yet, at the same time, so unlike in Stark's acceptance and acknowledgement of his weaknesses, in his faults and failings, in the need that drives him to give to those he sees as his to protect and love. A complicated man, but a good one.

In Tony Stark, Thor sees what his brother might have been.

"She's got a perfectly good set of apartments in the Tower. Everything Pippa could want or need. Babysitters on call. People who care about Pippa."

"People who try to manage her life?"

"She needs managing." Stark sounds almost savage in his statement. "Her family's upstate, and a day care centre on the helicarrier isn't any place for a child to grow up!"

"And the Tower is?" Thor holds up his hand as Stark frowns. "I understand your reasons, my brother, but Lieutenant Hill is not one who will submit to being meekly herded."

"I'm not herding her," Stark insists. "I'm just...stacking the deck."

"I doubt Maria appreciates the difference."

Thor looks inside to where Steve lies on the couch, Pippa lying on top of him, clutching a worn and shabby velveteen giraffe in her sleep. As they watch, his hand rises to brush at the tuft of hair at the back of her head that refuses to sit flat.

"Steve is good with her."

A harsh bark of something that mixes laughter and bitterness together. "Sometimes I wonder if there's anything he _isn't_ good at. Fighting. Leading. Parenting. Did you know that he broke up with the Carter agent - the sexy blonde one - and apparently they're not only still civil, but _friendly_. I can't even get Pepper to talk to me on email anymore."

Thor thinks it wisest not to say anything regarding Stark's failed relationship with Lady Pepper. There are places that even Asgardian gods should fear to tread.

As he stares out into the street and the night and the wind, he thinks of the other bits and pieces he has observed of Steve Rogers, of the conversation he had with Bruce when he last visited the good doctor in Mumbai. And he remains silent on that front, too. It's not that he doesn't trust Tony; there are things which are private and should remain so.

_I'm not even sure;_ Bruce admitted over a pot of tea. _It's just a suspicion I have. And I shouldn't be gossiping._

_Sometimes it helps to have a listening ear._

"Lucy, I'm home!"

Thor turns at Stark's extraordinary pronouncement in time to see Lieutenant Hill pause at the top of the stairs down to the sunken lounge area where toys and books are scattered all around the room, left where they were tired of by Pippa and not tidied up.

Inside, Steve looks up and his lips move in a question that causes Lieutenant Hill to frown and stiffen.

"Well, well, well," murmurs Stark after a moment. "Here's something interesting. JARVIS, pipe the conversation out here, please."

"You would eavesdrop-?"

Stark lifts a finger to indicate silence, and Thor, his curiosity piqued, falls quiet in time to hear the Lieutenant speak.

"-have my daughter get used to this life."

"She's Stark's legal heir," Steve replies, his hand hovering over the still-sleeping Pippa's head. "Better to get her used to this life now. And you're running yourself ragged trying to find somewhere to live when you've got an apartment right here."

"Your consideration for my state of mind is touching, Rogers, particularly in light of your belief that I lack a heart."

"It was wrong of me to say that." The words are bleak and full of regret. "I shouldn't have let a professional disagreement become personal."

"And yet, strangely, you did." The lieutenant doesn't pull her punches, and Thor sees this one strike at the heart of Rogers and who he is - that he is a good man and does the right thing. It is a bold, painful attack, and he admires it, even as it angers him that she would lash out at Steve thus. But Maria is not finished. "I do my job, Captain. I don't need your judgement on the decisions I make in my line of work. Especially when you have no idea of the cost of those choices."

"I'm sorry. I was wrong."

"Yes." The word hangs in the air, stark and plain. "May I have my daughter back so I can get her to bed?"

It's a delicate transfer, the sleeping body of a child from the arms of one adult to another, made more difficult by the awkwardness between the two. But Steve doesn't step away once Pippa is in her mother's arms, her head pillowed on Maria's shoulder. Her eyes lift to his, her expression wary. "What?"

"I don't understand you. If you think that's what I think of you, why do you even let me near your daughter?"

Something twitches across the Lieutenant's face as she looks up at Steve. "Because I trust that the man who looks after my daughter knows better than to bitch about her mom in her hearing."

"And when I'm not in her hearing?"

"It's a free world. You're allowed your own opinion."

"Is that why you won't live here in the Tower?"

She hesitates. It's a tiny moment of uncertainty, but Thor sees it before her mouth draws down at the corners. "Don't flatter yourself, Rogers."

"I may not have Barton's sight, but I can see what's right in front of me," Steve retorts. "And I may not be as clever as Banner, but I can work things out when they're shoved in my face."

There's a moment when something cold passes across her face, like a veil drawn down, leaving her remote and distant. She takes a deep breath, lets it out, and turns her cheek so it's resting against Pippa's head.

"When I was sixteen," she says in a distant, remote voice, "I walked out of my father's house. I swore I would never again sleep under a roof where someone hated me."

"I don't hate you." The words are torn from Steve, like a confession. "I think that's the problem."

"Then you need to deal with it, Captain."

"I have," Steve blurts. Then, quieter, his eyes fixed on her face, "I am."

The silence stretches, and after a moment, Lieutenant Hill nods.

"I don't plan to take Pippa away - not completely. But I don't want her to grow up like this - thinking this is going to be her life forever. Thinking this is normal."

Steve manages a faint smile. "Normal is overrated."

"Yes, but you _would_ say that, wouldn't you?" Maria sighs and steps away. "Good-night, Captain."

"Good night, Lieutenant."

He watches her go, but she doesn't look back.

"Well, well, well," murmurs Stark, still watching, his expression faintly arrested. He makes for the door and Thor starts to intercept him, reluctant to reveal they overheard the conversation, only the doors have already slid back and Steve has turned.

He flushes bright as he realises he had an audience. "Trust you to eavesdrop, Stark!"

"Oh, you knew we were there," Tony retorts. "Even if you forgot it in the rush of your little moment with Hill. Trust you to fall for a woman who doesn't even like what you are!"

Steve's expression goes stiff. "Better one who doesn't like _what_ I am, than one who doesn't like _who_ I am!"

"Don't you dare bring Pepper into this-"

"That is enough!" Thor intervenes before the two men can launch into full argument. They know each other too well, the dark mirror and the bright, and at this moment - wounded and at bay - their barbs would rend too-tender hearts beyond repairing. They cannot afford this - not as men, not as friends, not as colleagues. Not all cruelties can be forgiven and this slices too close to the heart to be easily mended.

"We did not mean to intrude," Thor tells Steve and that is honest enough. "But what concerns you and Lieutenant Hill concerns us all as Avengers - and as people who are concerned for Lady Pippa's wellbeing."

"And let's translate that from long-winded Asgardian," says Tony, brusque and brisk. "Is this going to complicate things?"

"No," Steve says, almost contemptuous as he walks to the fire stairs. "It won't."

This time, at least, Stark waits until the door swings shut. Then he turns to Thor. "You know, we've really got to ease back on the denial around here."

–

Nick looks up as Maria walks into his office and only indicates with a tap of his finger that she should clean the mashed banana off her uniform. With a wince, she pulls a handkerchief from her pocket and removes the food.

He turns the tablet so she can see the form. "Change of address notification?"

"That would be correct, sir."

"You're sure about this?"

"If you're asking if I like it, the answer's no. If you're asking if I get a choice about it..." Her expression says quite plainly that she resents Stark's interference in her daughter's life.

"There are other options." He wasn't going to suggest them, because they're S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouses, for personnel and agents who need somewhere quiet. But if Stark is pressuring her...

"I've had time to think about it, sir. If Stark is serious, then she'll have to learn to deal with him, the Avengers, and everything that comes with it. If things turn out otherwise... I've got insurance in place."

There's more. There's always more with a woman like Hill. Nick waits, wondering if she's willing to trust him with it. He wouldn't blame her if she didn't. If he's allowed his secrets, so is Hill.

"And," she says after a moment, "I may have to learn to trust that they're not as emotionally flaky as I like to think they are."

**tbc**


	4. Chapter 4

**NOTES: **This chapter comes with a warning: it contains ALL THE FEELS. There's a lot of cute here. And a lot of angst. And a lot of cute. And a lot of angst.

**And Baby Makes Eight**

- **Part IV** -

Maria does the power-down checklist for the Quinjet, exhausted beyond measure after a four-day mission in China, working with an agent who objected to her authority in the field – she practically has a collection of them - and desperately looking forward to a cuddle and babble from her daughter.

It's the longest time yet that she's been away from Pippa since Pippa was born. When she was needed to oversee a mission, she took overnighters and was back within twenty-four hours, and only once Pippa was old enough to understand that Mama was going away, but she would always come back.

Mere moments after Pippa's birth, Maria looked at her daughter swore she'd never allow Pippa to feel that she wasn't important to her mom. Some things had to come first – world security, for starters - but Pippa should never, _ever_ doubt that her mom loved her.

She thinks she's done an okay job; not perfect, but then her standards have come down a little since she embarked on this course of motherhood.

Sometimes it scares her, how far she's come.

Sometimes it scares her, how far she's yet to go.

And sometimes it scares her how much easier her life is with the backing of Nick Fury at S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers. Including – and she will never admit this anywhere but in her head – Tony Stark's 'adoption' of her daughter.

Laws have been laid down regarding Pippa, of course. Tony even keeps to most of them.

As she signs off the checklist and hauls her duffle out of the empty co-pilot's seat, Maria wonders how many of those rules were broken while she was away – and just how difficult it's going to be to get Pippa back into a routine.

"Welcome home, Lieutenant."

"Thanks, JARVIS. Where's Pippa and Sukie?"

"Miss Pippa is presently in the nursery. Unfortunately, Miss Sukie had to return home for a family crisis; her elder sister has been injured in difficult circumstances. She apologised most profusely."

Damn. Sukie is good with Pippa. Maria hopes the sister is okay, but the prospect of having to find an emergency nanny for her daughter is not particularly enthusing.

She steps into the elevator and rolls her shoulders, trying to ease the ache in her spine from the long flight in from the helicarrier. She doesn't even need to press the floor button in the elevator - the biosensors automatically set her destination as her quarters unless she indicates otherwise. "So who's looking after Pippa now since the team is up at the moon base?"

"Assorted people have been looking after Pippa. Commander Fury was her carer yesterday."

Which means Pippa's going to be unbearable. Fury might be the terror of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the despair of the Council, but far more terrifying to Maria is the sight of her boss playing 'granddad' and crawling all over the floor on his hands and knees as he chases after Pippa.

They don't talk about it. Ever.

But that's something else. Right now, Maria knows she's being stalled. "You haven't answered the question, JARVIS."

"Pippa is quite entertained and perfectly safe."

"JARVIS..."

"Peter Parker is babysitting her."

The elevator doors open on a toddler screaming with delight as she soars around the room from a contraption of webby threads that do nothing for Maria's maternal instincts, and a young man with a distinctly embarrassed and slightly hangdog look on his face when he sees who's at the door.

"Uh, hey, Miss Hill."

Maria forbears from reminding him that she's an agent, not a 'miss'.

"Mama! Mama! Look! I fly!" Pippa flaps her arms and legs, and Maria fixes Peter with a look that says she has a weapon. And knows where he lives. And has his medical records on file.

He smiles, bravura barely covering his nervousness. "I'll just get her down," he says.

Maria sighs. What the hell. Pippa clearly doesn't need her right now, and there'll be plenty of time for hugs and cuddles – and tantrums and screaming fits - when Peter's done playing. "No, I think that, since you're doing such a good job of entertaining her, Mr. Parker, you can keep doing it for an hour or so longer while I get a wash and something to eat. Unless you have work to do?"

Peter grins as Pippa demands another 'fly'. "I think Pip and I can manage another hour."

–

There are times when Bruce wishes he could still let himself get drunk.

Right now, he suspects Natasha wishes she could.

He indicates the empty bench space, weathered wood, unpainted, and well within view of the playground. "This seat taken?"

She knew he was coming – that one of them would come to look for her. She probably expected Steve. But Steve's giving Clint a target right now, and dealing with his own anger and guilt in the process. And, perhaps, facing the facts of his own future.

"I never wanted children," Natasha says without preamble, her voice low and even, her eyes staring blindly at the play equipment where children shriek and laugh and cry at play. "Pippa's lovely, of course, but I was never maternal. So why does it hurt?"

In that question, Bruce hears not the woman Natasha Romanova has become, but the child she was never allowed to be. Inside him, the Hulk rages, but there's no outlet for this anger, no target. The people who did this to her are long scattered and the trail is dead. There's only the anger, and in and of itself, it would do more harm than good.

It's still a struggle.

Natasha continues, almost as though she's talking to herself rather than to Bruce. "Regretting something I never wanted only once I discover I can never have it seems so...pitiful."

"It's human," Bruce says, letting his gaze drift across the park, watching the families go by. So small and ordinary a thing, but something he can't have. "And it's harder because you didn't make that choice – it was made for you."

"Is it easier on you or Steve?"

He shouldn't be surprised that Natasha goes for the throat, but his gut squeezes briefly. "Our circumstances are a little different. We can father children – at least theoretically we can - we just...think we probably shouldn't."

It came up just after Pippa's birth – an unguarded moment while holding Pippa when Steve had admitted he'd never even considered fatherhood when he took the serum. "_Before the serum, I never figured I'd find a woman who'd want kids with me. And afterwards... there was the war to fight._"

Bruce certainly wasn't thinking of his future progeny when he took the serum. But then, he wasn't expecting the serum to turn him into a raging monster, either.

"You'd make a good father."

"It's the Other Guy I'm worried about."

"He'd beat up the other dads."

Bruce laughs then, caught between the horror of the thought and the black humour of it. "Barton said that, didn't he?" The words slip out before he manages to censor them, and he regrets the mention, because the smile slides from her face.

Is her anger and grief for herself, or for Clint?

"He should have children of his own."

"And if he wanted them, would you let him walk away?" Her silence is all the witness to the struggle that Bruce needs. "He's not angry about that."

"I know. But he should still..." Natasha trails off and catches a ball that bounces up at her, thrown by an overenthusiastic little boy, who starts to come close to fetch it, then hesitates, uncertainly. She tosses it lightly back to him and he grins shyly at her from behind the toy, too bashful to say thank-you before running off. His mother can be heard telling him he should have thanked the nice lady.

The 'nice lady's mouth twitches a little, but her eyes are very far away when she speaks. "We're not made for normal things, are we? Any of us."

Bruce looks at the woman who was bred and trained into a tool for death and desire.

He thinks of Tony, kept alive by the grace of his own brain and the drive to be more than the butcher of America. He thinks of Steve's heart and hopes too big for the body he was born into, given manifestation by Erskine's brilliance; Clint's instincts to brutality honed to a fine tip and used without mercy until S.H.I.E.L.D. offered him an alternative; Thor and the cost of his youthful pride – a brother of bitterness and worlds rent asunder.

And he looks at himself, at his own anger at the world and his desire to change it, to make it better, and where that anger and pride and drive and will took him – is still taking him.

It's a little different for the newer members of the Avengers - Henry, Janet, T'Challa, Heather. The original six were brought together by the Chitauri invasion and Phil's death – need and anger and revenge. Newer members request to join; but the founding six had the choice to be Avengers or to fail the world.

'Normal' was never an option for them after that.

"No," he answers her gently. "We're not."

"So we really are lost creatures."

"If you define 'lost' by the standard of 'normal', I guess we are."

"And if you don't?"

Bruce takes a moment. "We're drawn to Pippa because she's our touchstone to normality."

"The little girl who plays pony with the Hulk is a touchstone to normality?" Natasha arches a brow at him, and his cheeks grow hot in the light breeze of the afternoon. No, she hasn't broadcast it about, but she's not going to forget it, either.

"We're not heroes in Pippa's eyes. We're just the people who love her."

"And she loves us back."

"No hero-worship. No reverence."

It's that very irreverence that delights the Other Guy - someone who isn't afraid of him, who doesn't tiptoe around him, even if it's only because she doesn't understand she should. Bruce knows and fears what the Hulk could do, but trust is such a rare commodity these days - rare enough in those who knew them before they became what they are; almost non-existent in those who've met them since – that he doesn't have the strength to walk away when he should.

So Bruce understands why Pepper's departure left Tony broken in ways nobody talks about anymore. And why Tony made Pippa his legal heir.

"We can't be normal anymore, but we can have Pippa, who thinks we are?"

"That's about it."

There's a moment when it looks like she wants to protest this. Then Natasha sighs, and something in her relaxes. "So Maria's stuck with us."

"Do you really think she'd ever get rid of Tony?"

One corner of Natasha's mouth quirks upwards, and her eyes gleam as she turns her head. "She still sometimes thinks about getting Pippa out and away from us into what she considers a normal life."

Bruce snorts. "She'd be lucky to make it to the door."

–

Clint has never seen behind Fury's eyepatch. He was quite happy not knowing.

Unfortunately, it seems that, like dogtags, glasses, long hair, and beards, eyepatches are an utterly natural thing for a baby girl to grab hold and pull off – or, in the case of long hair and beards, _attempt_ to pull off.

"Yes, Agent Barton?" Fury says, brows arched. "Did you have a report to give?"

Pippa waves the eyepatch at Clint, and Clint decides that discretion is the better part of saying nothing about the sunk-socketed Eye That Is Not. He's going to have a word with whoever coined that phrase, too, because it's damned _catchy_.

He gives his report and gets the hell out of dodge, not even stopping to ask the director if he wants Clint to take Pippa back to the daycare.

–

In the middle of Pippa's screaming tantrum, with Tony holding onto his temper by the thinnest of margins, Pepper walks in, looking as cool, elegant, and untouchable as Tony's ever known her to be.

Their eyes meet and for a moment he can't think.

Then her gaze drops to the thrashing child on the floor.

"Philippa Carmelita Hill," she says in the quiet, authoritative voice that snaps something in Tony to attention. "_What_ is that noise you're making?"

Pippa scrubs her eyes and – little traitor – flings herself at Pepper, still-sobbing with her crocodile tears. Tony can't hear what she's babbling and he's kind of glad of it, because otherwise he'd have to contradict her and it would get messy. As if it isn't already messy enough with Pepper in the room.

"Bad day?" Pepper asks as she hoists Pippa up and rests her on her hips, her gaze taking in the shambles of what was a perfectly good playtime until they had an argument over naps and snacks.

"I never believed in the terrible twos before this," Tony says, scrubbing a hand through his hair and ignoring the clutching in his gut at her proximity. "I mean, of course they happened, but I figured it was mostly parents losing their shit after a couple of years of parenting."

Pepper laughs. "I suspect that most parents have lost it after a few months. They just hide it better. What is it, Pippa?"

Pippa is batting at Pepper's shoulder trying to get her attention, and the stream of insistent baby babble that flows from her mouth gives Tony a moment to study Pepper.

She looks good. Of course, she always looked good, even back before- But he can't let himself think about that. There are things Tony needs to do - or not do - to stay sane, and not allowing himself to think about those two years when things were good - or, at least, as good as they'd ever been - is one of them.

_Better than one who doesn't like _who _I am!_

Pepper knew who and what Tony was within six months of working for him. She knew all his faults and his failings long before they finally got together. And yet, after two years, it all fell apart and Tony still doesn't know how or why, or what - if anything - he could have done to save them.

Maybe it just wasn't meant to be.

But that's bullshit. An easy out that means nothing and doesn't require any self-examination. God knows Tony's never been one for navel-gazing; but he's very aware of his faults.

"You want Tony to read you a book?" Pepper asks, and Pippa sticks her fingers in her mouth and nods emphatically.

Tony gives her a stern look. "You wanted cookies before."

"Cookies, too!"

Pepper has the look on her face that means she wants to laugh but is keeping it formal and professional. "I'm sure that Tony is willing to read to you, but there won't be any cookies."

The little con artist lets her lower lip tremble for a moment, but Pepper's expression is adamant, and after a moment Pippa wriggles to be let down.

"How do you do that?" Tony asks "When I told her she couldn't have any you-know-whats, she screamed at me."

"A woman's touch," is the lofty reply. "Not that way, Tony!"

"I wasn't-" The lie dies on his lips. "Okay, I was." But he doesn't defend or justify it. Apart from the fact that Pippa's in the room, he doesn't need to - Pepper knows him too well. "Will you stay?"

"Pep-pep stay!" Pippa insists, detouring to wrap herself and the book around Pepper's leg and giving her a beseeching look.

Tony hides his grin at Pepper's expression. Yes, he's pathetic. But he's an opportunist, too. And he'll take what he can get, even if he has to resort to using a two year-old girl to get it.

And it wrenches something in him, sitting next to Pepper on the sofa, their thighs close enough to warm each other, closer than he's been allowed to get since—well, _since_. Pippa sits in his lap, leaning against his shoulder, her leg stuck out across Pepper's lap as though to make sure Pepper doesn't run away. It feels like...family – like things he can't have, things he wanted without knowing he wanted them – like Pepper herself.

He's watching her, not Pippa, watching the way her mouth moves and her face softens as she reads through the romps and the roaring and howling and rolling of terrible eyes and gnashing of terrible teeth. So he barely notices when they sail back through a year and in and out of weeks and through a day back into the night of Max's very own room where his dinner is still hot.

Pippa jumps off his lap and runs to get another book and he seizes the opportunity.

"I never apologised," he says softly.

"Tony—"

"For what happened. For how things went. For—anything, really. You wouldn't let me, and I need to—"

Her gaze darts across the room to Pippa. "This doesn't make things the way they were, Tony."

"No," he says. "But it clears the way forward. For me, anyway, since you've moved on. I know I can't have—I'm not asking for that. I just—I miss you."

"Book!" Pippa announces, pushing herself into the moment and climbing back into Tony's lap. "Pep-pep read!"

"I... Pippa, I can't..." Pepper drags her gaze away from him. "I have to—"

"Stay!" Pippa's lower lip wobbles tremulously and Pepper hesitates.

"Stay," Tony says, knowing it's probably the thing most likely to send her running but unable to stop himself, unable to give up hope. "Please."

Pepper looks at the door and then down at him and the little girl who is and isn't theirs. And then it's like her knees crumple; she sits heavily back down on the sofa. "Very well, I'll stay," she tells them – tells _him_. Then her mouth quirks with a touch of mischief. "But Tony's reading this time."

Tony doesn't mind reading. Especially not with Pippa in his lap and Pepper beside him.

And behind Pippa's back, his fingertips touch Pepper's, and she doesn't pull away.

–

Pippa is vibrating with excitement by the time they reach the park, kicking in the pram and making the happy squealy noises that always make Steve grin. And Steve is looking forward to an afternoon spent with his two best girls.

Then Maria's phone rings.

She grimaces as she looks at the display. "It's Sitwell. I have to take this—"

"I'll take her," Steve says, taking the pram out ofher hands. "We'll be in the park."

Maria's smile is brief and grateful as she takes the call, before it drops and she's all business, all agent.

As Steve walks on towards the park with Pippa, he thinks Maria looks tired. Too many late nights, working and looking after Pippa. S.H.I.E.L.D. demands a lot of her and she never seems to have enough rest, enough time to relax. He wants to say something, but he doesn't have the right. She hasn't given him the right to look after her, but she's given him the opportunity to look after her daughter. He works with what he has.

"What's first?" Steve asks Pippa, who's clapping her hands and already trying to wriggle out of the pram restraints. "The see saw or the slippery slide?"

The instant she's out, she drags him towards the slide, and Steve laughs as she tows him along, all the way to the first of the seven or eight platforms that rise up in shallow stairs to the colourful, fenced-in top of the slippery slide.

"Teev," Pippa says when she climbs up onto the first platform and realises he's not coming up after her.

"I can't go in," he tells her, smiling. "I'm too big. You can do it yourself. I'll walk around the outside edge and keep you company."

Pippa pouts a little, but Steve moves along the outside of the first two platforms, sticking his hand through the coloured bars and wiggling his fingers at her. "Come on!"

She climbs up and toddles across the wooden floor, giggling as she tries to catch his hand and he moves it away, further up the stair. On the other side of the enclosed space, another little girl is being coaxed up by her father. She's smaller and probably younger than Pippa, with little pink ribbons tied around tightly curled pigtails. Less certain of herself, halfway up she's decided she doesn't want to go any further, and Steve meets the father's wry smile as the other man exhorts his daughter to keep going so she can slide down.

"Hey, Pippa," he says when Pippa grabs his hand and tugs it. "How about you help the other little girl up the stairs?"

Pippa turns her head to look at the other girl as though considering whether she wants to. The other child sniffles and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand, shaking her head at her father. Then jerks away, startled, when Pippa takes her hand and tugs her along.

"Daddy!"

"It's okay, Alice – you've just made a friend. Come on, she's going to help you up to the top and then you can slide down together!"

Alice takes a little while to be persuaded, but she makes her way up the stairs as Pippa chirps encouraging noises at her. By the time the two girls slide down the slide with delighted squeals, they're fast friends and run for the stairs to do it all over again.

"Well, that'll keep them occupied for at least five minutes," says Alice's father, leaning his shoulder against one of the support columns for the play equipment. "And my brother-in-law thinks minding children is easy."

"Does he have any of his own?"

"Not yet. But when he does, I'm going to watch him struggle and laugh. Payback's a bitch." The man says it cheerfully, without any malice, just the satisfaction of human nature.

Steve glances around but it doesn't look like Alice's mother is anywhere nearby. "Your wife went shopping?"

The man gives him a look. "She's working, I stay home. We did the math and she earns more after tax and breaks and stuff. Plus, I'm better at holding down the house and getting Alice to do what she's told. We figured it made more sense that way."

"You do what you have to," Steve says, thinking of Maria and the daycare on the helicarrier, of babysitters and bequests.

"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm doing what I want," says the other man. "I wouldn't swap watching Alice grow up for any number of bonuses."

He sounds sharp and Steve glances at him, realising he's touched a nerve. Things have changed a lot in seventy years, but he tries to keep an open mind and not give unwarranted offense. "Sorry, I didn't mean to imply…"

"No, no, it's okay," the other man says. "I have a tendency to jump the gun. Oversensitive, I guess." He smiles, rueful. "I guess this is just a day out of the office for you?"

"Yes. Well, not exactly. We don't, that is, I don't have regular hours that way." Steve grimaces at the prospect of trying to explain it. "It's complicated."

"Sounds it. Todd, by the way." One hand is stuck out for Steve to shake. It's a firm shake, brisk and friendly, and Steve doesn't think twice about giving his name.

"Steve."

"A pleasure to meet you."

High-pitched squealing draws their attention away – the girls are coming back, their little feet pattering over the playground turf. Alice giggles as Todd bends down to swoop her up into his arms, and Pippa wraps herself around Steve's leg, and babbles up at him. Before he can bend down and hoist her up, her head turns and she lets go and runs for the pram, where Maria is tucking her phone away in her jacket, just on her way towards them.

The expression on her face softens as she picks up her daughter and says something to Pippa who giggles and wraps her arms around her mom's neck. And Steve's chest suddenly feels too tight for breathing as the little girl rests her head against Maria's shoulder.

When he looks away, Todd has a dawning recognition in his eyes.

"I thought you looked familiar." Todd nods at Pippa. "So she's the Stark heir, then?"

Steve hesitates, torn between the truth and the desire to protect Pippa. The truth wins out. "Yes."

"Right. Big shoes for a little girl," is all Todd says. "I guess she'll grow into them."

"Not too fast," Steve murmurs. "At least, we're trying not to make her grow into them too fast…"

But something else is dawning on Todd's face as he looks from Pippa to Steve. "She's not yours, is she?"

"No."

Pippa is babbling at Maria, and twisting to get out of her momma's arms. Maria lets her down and allows herself to be dragged over, her mouth curving at the corners as she meets Steve's gaze. And Steve can tell himself that the look in her eyes is just the shared amusement of two adults caring for a beautiful, willful child, but his heart stubbornly refuses to believe it.

_She's not yours, is she?_

An afternoon with his two best girls?

They're not his. Steve knows they never will be. But sometimes – like today – he lets himself pretend.

–

Maria regrets letting anyone know she planned to redo Pippa's room as a third birthday present.

Once Stark knew (and she had to tell him since it's his tower), she found herself vetoing all manner of decorating suggestions from him and the other Avengers.

Some are easier to veto than others – or maybe she's just growing tired of always having to argue Stark out of his latest, greatest idea.

"It's not pink, princessy, or gender-oriented," Stark points out.

Maria pinches the bridge of her nose, even as she acknowledges her last three objections to Stark's suggestions do not apply here. Also, considering both Banner and Dr. Pym are hovering behind him, this is not merely his brainchild, and therefore will be more difficult to simply reject.

"It's wool pile, easily cleanable, decorative _and_ instructive. What can you possibly have against it?"

"It's the periodic table and she's three years old!"

"And? But? So? Therefore? Learning can never start too early. Besides," Stark adds, "my first suggestion had a mad scientist's test tube and glass flask collection. Bruce persuaded me that 'Better Living Through Chemistry' was probably not an appropriate theme given his affliction."

"If, by 'affliction' you mean his tendency to turn into a big, green monster when he gets angry? Inappropriate seems a slightly inadequate word to describe it." Maria gives up. There's a time to fight with Tony toe-to-toe over the rules of interaction with her daughter; during a discussion of the décor in her room is not that time. "Fine. The periodic table rug – but in her playroom, not her bedroom."

Tony smirks, inspiring an urge to smack that look off his face. He's been insufferable since Pepper started talking to him again. Whether they're going to make another try of it is something else. But Maria wishes Pepper luck.

"It's a good learning tool – even for a young child," Dr. Pym is saying, aiming for mollifying.

"And Stark wonders why I keep contemplating taking Pippa and falling off the grid."

Not that she ever would.

But sometimes it's nice to dream.

–

Natasha rather resents Tony's implication that she never had a 'proper' childhood.

Perhaps she did not have a childhood like his, but that isn't a reason to belittle what she did have.

"Stark can't talk," Maria snorts as she untangles the skipping rope that has twisted itself in knots while Pippa makes anxious noises. "His childhood was nannies, boarding school, and building little baby AIs. Okay, all done, Pip!"

"Danku, Mama," Pippa declares with a smacking kiss before she runs off to continue her game of 'superheroine' – where she rescues her toys from dire situations and then they all sit down to tea and happy endings.

Natasha admits that Pippa's tendency to attempt to commando-roll under coffee tables and crawl under chairs during her 'rescues' is most likely due to her and Clint's influence. But everyone blames the stomping of wooden-block buildings on Bruce (which he claims is ridiculous because the Other Guy has never stomped anything while Pippa was around, and Maria has forbidden any videos, clips, or even news segments of the Avengers to be shown to her daughter), and her tendency to invent imaginary friends who talk to her is laid firmly at Tony's door (JARVIS denies all involvement every time).

However, whether her penchant for throwing things at other things is Steve's fault, Thor's fault, or just the natural inclination of a small child is hotly debated.

Maria sits back in the couch with a sigh. "My childhood wasn't anything I'd wish on someone else," she murmurs. "But…my stepmom used to read to my brothers and sisters when they were little, and she didn't mind if I sat in and listened. I'd just… It was nice. I want Pippa to have that."

And, Natasha suspects, it's a kind of revenge on Maria's part; if she can't give Pippa a 'normal' life – as defined by the rest of the US population who aren't Avengers – then she is at least going to give her daughter a life with some kind of structure and regularity to it.

So, every night before bed, there is The Reading. Currently two books of Pippa's choice, read to her by whoever offers – or is roped into – the duty.

Frankly, Natasha's surprised there hasn't been more fighting over who gets to read to Pippa.

"_My father knows a place we can only reach by boat._"

Maria's rule for bedtime stories is that the only person allowed in the room with Pippa and herself is the person doing the reading.

However, she said nothing about standing in the corridor outside Pippa's room and listening.

"_Not many people go there – you have to know the way through the reef._"

Tonight – and most nights, lately – Steve is the one doing the reading, his voice even and easy.

On the other side of the door, Stark leans back against the wall with his hands in his pockets, casually dressed, like he just came up from his labs, with the faint glow of the reactor beneath his t-shirt. Beyond him and on the other wall, Thor leans with one shoulder, arms folded, expression pensive.

"_My father says there has been a forest here for over a hundred million years._"

Bruce is cross-legged on the floor, his upturned hands resting on his knees. He's been off in other parts a lot lately – although he hasn't said if it's his restlessness or the Hulk's. His hair's growing long again. Someone – probably Steve – will drag him along to a barber in the next few weeks. Steve is good like that – the unofficial 'mother hen' for all of them.

Nobody has yet commented on the fact that Steve seems to be putting himself in the role of Pippa's unofficial father, too, taking as much of a proprietal interest in Pippa as Stark does – albeit, a lot more subtly.

Of course, it might just be that nobody sees it but Natasha.

"_My father says there used to be crocodiles and kangaroos that lived in trees. Maybe there still are._"

Clint leans against the wall behind her, one hand on her hip, the other folding about her fingers. His chin rests on her shoulder and his breathing matches hers. They can't have children together; Natasha's mostly made her peace with this – although she thinks it a pity that Clint won't leave anything of himself in the world.

A part of her wishes they could – that they lived 'normal' lives – that they could be 'ordinary'.

"_I wonder how long it takes the trees to grow to the top of the forest._"

But a woman who was brought up to be an angel of death, and a man who blooded his hands when he was still in his teens and hasn't stopped in the twenty-plus years since are not 'ordinary'. And maybe that's a good thing – what kind of parents would they be?

"_My father says we'll come here again someday_."

After that conversation about children on the park bench with Bruce, Natasha not only understood why she was so drawn to Pippa, but also why Maria struggles with the involvement of the Avengers in her daughter's life. Standing on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s thin grey line, Maria would understand the distinction between living the everyday and fighting the things that would destroy that 'everyday'.

They don't get to have it both ways.

"_But will the forest still be here when we come back?_"

The story ends, and Pippa pleads for another, but she's already had two, and Maria is firm about not letting her daughter stretch the rules. Then there are kisses – Pippa's attempt to draw out the goodnights – and before long there'll be wardrobe checks for monsters and entreaties for cups of water.

Meanwhile, the shadowy people out in the corridor depart, one by one.

Thor pads away on bare feet with Stark strolling after. Bruce eases himself up, surprisingly silent for a man who carries the Hulk within him, and Clint and Natasha drift along behind him. And Steve strides out just as the elevator arrives.

They don't speak when they get in the elevator - not about tonight's story, not about what draws them to this child, not about the things they feel in the quiet of an ordinary girl's ordinary bedtime – a yearning for something that's beyond them as individuals, as heroes, as Avengers.

But they're not normal, and perhaps they never were.

–

The visual is stark, the message brief.

A little girl in tattered overalls beats her fists against a white door, sobbing with fear and exhaustion, as a computer-generated voice-over says simply, "_Keep S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, and Stark Industries leashed for the next seven days and you'll get her back unharmed and in one piece. Disobey…and here's one I prepared earlier!_"

There's a reason many S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel – particularly the high-level agents - choose to 'die' after a few years in the job. It's easier to work for the good of the world when you have no connections to it.

It's also isolating.

But Nick was present when Pippa was born. He jiggled her when she cried and told her stories to get her to nap. He let her climb into his lap and stand up using his shoulders, take off his eyepatch and ask artless questions about what happened to him.

He doesn't know the little girl who lies broken and empty-eyed – the 'example' that will apply to Pippa if the demands are not met – but he can see Pippa's face on the small, brutalised body.

_What profit it a man if he save the world and lose his own soul, Nick?_ He can almost hear Phil's voice, see the smile, weary and gentle. _We can't ignore our humanity for the sake of humanity._

_I can,_ had been Nick's retort.

_And that's why you're Director, and I'll never make more than agent._

He wonders if Phil has a bitter smile on his lips at this moment. Because Nick let a little girl crawl into his heart, and now he's hostage to her safety, just as her mother is, just as the Avengers are.

Stark's already raging, making plans, plunging into the fray with reckless hot-temper. Pym and Barton are trying to temper him – and their own anger. Thank God Banner stayed off the helicarrier this time – even his much-vaunted control wouldn't have survived this.

Rogers and Romanoff are watching Hill. Rogers has the air of a creature leashed - if Hill only gives the command, he'll jump. Romanoff has already put the personal away; the Black Widow is in the building.

And Hill? Hill watches her daughter as the video replays, the hatefully sing-song voice repeating its taunting message.

She's in lockdown mode, with nothing but a pinched look about her lips.

But when she turns to Nick, there's a ferocity in her eyes which makes him want to reach for a weapon that wouldn't protect him anyway. Not from a mother's rage.

"Sir," she says, and her voice is the cold adamantium will for which she made Lieutenant at just past thirty, "Permission to take leave."

Nick grasps what she intends to do immediately. He knows what she's asking of him while she does what she has to. _Keep S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, and Stark Industries leashed._ "Permission granted."

He won't stand in her way.

God help whoever does.

**tbc**


	5. Chapter 5

**NOTES**: Mild violence and moderate angst in this section.

**And Baby Makes Eight**

- **Part V** -

Seven days is more than enough time to find someone if you know how.

Call it unconstitutional, unfair, abuse of power, or sheer, unrepentant nepotism. Maria doesn't give a shit. Someone has her daughter and is using her as pawn in a game where Earth could be the stakes.

"It works, but the ride's really rough," Jane Foster says, her gaze troubled. "Thor said it made him sick and he's used to it. Are you sure you want to do this?"

"Have a daughter, have her taken away from you, and then ask that question again." Maria keeps her voice cold, because if she doesn't, she'll lose it. Her daughter – her baby girl – in the hands of—But she can't let herself think about that. Can't let herself think that the Avengers made a target out of her daughter.

She'll think about it – feel about it, deal with it – later. Right now, she has a job to do, and a god to confront.

Oh Jesus, she hopes she's up to this.

"Thank you for this."

"Go get Pippa back." Jane says, and there's compassion and concern in her face as she starts the initiating sequence for the transfer between worlds.

Then there's nothing but lightning and the sensation of being stretched before her whole body vibrates like a massage chair. Maria feels vaguely dizzy for a moment as it feels like everything around her is tearing apart, but she keeps her eyes open because if she's going to be sick, she's going to see what's coming at her.

Nausea only lasts a moment, though. Her breath catches as the universe tears past her, around her, through her. Shimmering, sheeting light writhes along tunnelling brightness, leaving twisting darkness seared against her brain. Stars float like candle lanterns in the river of space, and something tugs her body on and on and on, leading through the emptiness of space that maybe isn't so empty after all until—

Solidity beneath her feet. Radiant solidity beneath her feet, glowing with a light that's never been seen on Earth.

Solid ground. The Rainbow Bridge.

A little dizziness persists, but nausea clutches briefly and fades at once. _Calibrated for humans,_ Maria thinks as she stares out across dark water to a shimmering city.

Movement to her right. Maria turns and looks up into the golden eyes of a helmed and armoured man, as tall and forbidding as Commander Fury at his most intimidating.

"Heimdall."

"Lieutenant Hill. You have come to ask about your daughter." It's not a question. "Asgard cannot intervene in a matter of Midgard."

Maria takes a deep breath. There are stories told of mortals who went up against the gods. Very few of those stories turned out well for the mortals.

She's determined this is going to be one of the few.

"That's not what was said when Loki led an attack on Earth," Maria responds. "Or when Sif and the Warriors Three came to warn Thor of Loki's actions. Even thousands of years ago, when the Frost Giants attacked our world, Odin hardly sat on his hands and did nothing."

"Yet these were matters of worlds, not the taking of a single child."

"And yet the taking of a single child is what started the chain of events leading to our current predicament," Maria says with all the cool and calm she can summon when pointing the finger of accusation at a being so far removed from humanity as to be termed a god. "A moment's compassion on the part of Odin has caused grief untold – to both Asgard and Earth."

"By this argument you would claim that Asgard owes you?"

Maria looks towards the great city. A distant figure strides along the rainbow bridge, distinctive by the way he swings his arms, and the way his hair gleams beneath the brightness of the starry skies.

"I would argue that my daughter using Mjolnir's handle as a teething toy suggests Asgard's non-interventionist policy is a failure. And I'm not asking for a platoon of Valkyries – although I wouldn't say no. All I need is my daughter's location."

She's careful not to make it sound like a plea. Even if it is. Her patience and her calm are running out, and without Asgardian help, she doesn't have much hope of finding Pippa without revealing her hand. As it is, going to Dr. Foster's lab was a risk, but one she had to take.

There were people back in S.H.I.E.L.D. counselling her not to risk Pippa's life – to stay tight and not endanger her daughter. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about what Maria should do. By the time she managed to make an escape, she'd had her fill of well-meaning advice, awkward sympathy, and veiled satisfaction.

And then she'd had to deal with the Avengers.

It's taken everything she had to get through the last twenty-four hours – all the self-control and calm she'd developed and fostered through the years of her father's bitterness and anger, all the patience she'd schooled herself to in her training with the marines and S.H.I.E.L.D..

_Don't risk Pippa. Don't risk your daughter's life._

The problem is that it's too late for warnings. She put Pippa in harm's way when she let the Avengers into her life. She made her daughter a target when she let Stark make Pippa his heir and didn't fight it tooth and nail down to the last clause. She let herself become complacent, assured, _stupid._

And the price might be Pippa's life – or worse, Pippa's faith in the world.

Maria wants nothing more than to curl up in a ball and mourn at the unfairness of the universe. She can't. Her daughter needs her and Maria doesn't intend to fail that. And if this is what she needs to do to get Pippa back…

Thor strides up. "Lieutenant Hill. What has happened?"

"Pippa's been kidnapped."

The air grows thunderous, pressure building in Thor's anger. "Who dares?"

"We don't know. Yet." Maria doesn't need to turn her head as a faint ozonic crackle heralds the arrival of someone else through Dr. Foster's portal. She knows who followed her even before his hand brushes her shoulder blade and barely turns her head to acknowledge him. "You shouldn't have come."

"It was me or Tony."

"You got him to agree to that?"

"Sort of. Bruce threatened to sit on him as the Hulk."

"And that worked?"

"No. But it gave me and Natasha a headstart. She's not coming," Steve adds.

"At least one of you has sense."

Thor looks at Heimdall. "Is she alive?"

"If I knew, I should not be telling them – or you," the guardian says, grave and steady. "This is not the way things are done."

"It is what is right!"

Heimdall doesn't flinch at Thor's anger. "I stand here and see many things which are not right. I cannot change them all."

"But you can change this one." Maria says, stepping forward, away from the heat of Steve at her back. Comforting as his presence is, she wishes he hadn't come. He distracts her, and Pippa can't afford that. "You can tell me where my daughter is, Heimdall. That's all I want."

"Earth is owed this," Steve adds. "For returning Loki and the Tesseract to Asgard. For the trouble Loki caused us which has made us a target."

"And who, then, was it who made Philippa Hill a target, Steve Rogers?" Heimdall looks pointedly from Steve to Thor and back to Maria again. "All acts echo in the void, and what seems small today may grow into a great thing tomorrow."

Maria presses her lips together. "So you won't help us?"

Heimdall looks at Thor. "Will you sanction this?"

"I have put her in danger," Thor says after a moment, and the angry helplessness in his voice echoes Maria's own frustration and fury. "I cannot stand aside and do nothing. Seek her and find her and if there is a price to be reckoned for this, I will pay it or owe it."

"You may have to stand aside and do nothing," Steve says grimly as Heimdall turns to look out across the void. "Our hands are tied – so are S.H.I.E.L.D.'s. It's a condition of Pippa's safety."

The air around them crackles with Thor's fury. "But that… Maria's hands are not tied?"

"Oh, they're tied." Maria tells him. "But S.H.I.E.L.D. has contingencies in place for this situation. Not all of them are known to Tony Stark and his pet AI."

She's worked with S.H.I.E.L.D. for over a third of her life, she's met and dealt with plenty of people, and more than a few of them owe her personal favours. It's going to be messy and dangerous, but if she has to use up every last bit of credit she has to get her daughter back, then it'll be worth it.

It has to be worth it.

"You have any assistance we may render," Thor promises, and although Maria suspects it will be an empty promise if Odin chooses otherwise. Which is why she'll take what she can get as fast as it's given her. Pippa's location to start with and any assistance thereafter.

She doubts it'll be as much as she wants, but she's not going to turn away any help – even the help of the gods.

Heimdall stares out into the void, seeing whatever it is he sees. Maria knows he keeps an eye on Earth, because of Thor, Jane, and the Tesseract, but also because Earth may be small potatoes in the cosmic scheme of things, but the Avengers are a wild card that nobody – not even the Asgard – can predict.

A hand smooths across her back, sliding up, fingers curling over her shoulder. She glances up at Steve and doesn't know if she wants to break away or turn into the comfort he's offering.

Safer not to react. Safer not to give in.

"I have found her."

"Where?" Steve asks.

Maria braces herself for the answer she dreads more than _where_. She knows what happens to too many kidnapping victims when a ransom is demanded. "Is she alive?"

Heimdall turns and the gold eyes burn with knowledge. "Yes."

–

_Keep the Avengers, S.H.I.E.L.D., and Stark Industries leashed…_

Maria has no idea where the line is drawn between using S.H.I.E.L.D. resources and using resources she encountered while with S.H.I.E.L.D.. But she can't do this alone, she needs help.

And she needs to do this.

Dr. Foster's project was on the deep books – the ones that they learned to keep off the helicarrier networks after Stark hacked them. Using her to get to Asgard and locating Pippa was low-risk. Getting the Avengers involved is not.

At least it's only Steve, Thor, and Natasha right now, with Dr. Foster standing to the side looking worried. Even if the guys are being as bullheaded as Stark and Pym can be.

"You're not doing this alone!"

Thor is more reasonable – at least on the surface. "It would not be wise to attempt this by yourself, Maria."

"I won't be doing this alone," Maria retorts. She has contacts outside of S.H.I.E.L.D. and favours owed her by people with useful skillsets. She's going to call in whatever markers she has to call in. "I'm saying that you're not coming with me."

"The hell I'm not!"

Her temper snaps, stretched to breaking point. "The hell you are! I don't need you – any of you – endangering my daughter any more than you already have!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

There's a dangerous look in Steve's eyes. It gives Maria a moment's pause, but she's been silent too long.

"It means exactly what you think it means, Steve!" The words pour out of her in a fall of fear and frustration, and she can't stop them, doesn't want to, won't. "This is why I didn't want you – any of you – involved in her life! This is why I fought you and Stark and Banner at the start. And you wouldn't let me back away. You pushed because you wanted something you shouldn't have had in the first place. And after a while I gave up trying while because I can't fight all of you all the time and with everything else going on it was easier for me to just give in. And now someone has Pippa – has taken her away and will think nothing of killing her - for no other reason than because she's a useful hostage to the Avengers' good behaviour!"

The truth hangs in the air between them, the ugly root of why Pippa is gone. The Avengers loved her and in loving her, they made her a target.

Steve's expression is frozen – helplessness, grief, anger, hurt. Thor bows his head. And Natasha's expression is carefully blank – her 'hiding' face, the one she defaults to when she doesn't want to show her emotions.

And Maria looks at them and, for that trembling, awful moment, hates them and all superheroes.

"This isn't helping Pippa," Jane Foster says briskly after a moment, her voice cool and authoritative. And Maria is reminded once again that strength is not always physical. "Thor, you'll go with Natasha back to the Tower. From the sound of it, they're going to need your help with Tony and Bruce. Maria, it's not up to me, but I'd take Steve. You'll need at least one card you know in your deck and he'll be…less obvious."

Disbelief locks her tongue before she chokes on something that's not quite hysteria. "He'll be _less obvious_?"

Dr. Foster's glance flicks to Thor, big and dangerous and larger-than-life in spite of being more or less the same size as Steve. It says everything that needs to be said.

"We can dye Steve's hair," says Natasha, coming in cool and composed now that she's had a moment to think. "We'll activate his Life Model Decoy. And," she says with a hint of humour, "at least you know he can take orders."

The glance she shoots Steve might be a warning or it might be an encouragement. Maria doesn't know, doesn't care. Her outburst drained her, all she wants now is to find her daughter and go home and never speak to any of the Avengers again.

"Fine," she says, and looks to Steve. He's stepped back from the edge, that moment of anger stifled under the soldier's face. "You come with me, you follow my lead, and you take my orders. Understand?"

His lips press together, tight and white. "Understood."

He walks from the room, spine ramrod straight, shoulders back, like a soldier sent to do an unpleasant duty by a commander he'd rather see dead. Thor goes after him, a troubled expression on his face. Dr. Foster looks like she wants to say something, then nods at Maria and follows them out.

Part of Maria wishes she hadn't said what she did. But they needed to know. Especially Steve, who's doted on Pippa these last few years with a tenderness that Maria's watched with no small amount of envy. Her own father never cared much about his eldest daughter, and she grew up believing that she wasn't worth that attention or care.

And, yes, Maria took advantage of the Avengers' interest to give Pippa the family that she couldn't give her daughter alone, so she's as much to blame as they are.

Natasha's watching her, a steady, wary gaze.

"If you have something to say, spit it out."

"You were pretty hard on him."

"Yes. I was." And it hurt her to say that to Steve. Because he's...Steve. And because Maria knows it's her daughter whom he's in love with, but he makes it easy to forget. "But this isn't about his feelings." Or about her own. "It's about Pippa and getting her back."

And they both know it's not just about Steve.

Now Natasha's lashes drop, a moment's grief and acceptance before they rise again and the Black Widow is back and in control, all business. "I'll get Steve's Life Model Decoy into action on the helicarrier. Thor and I will run what interference we can on Stark and Bruce."

"Thank you."

"Good luck."

Maria heads for the door, already calculating what they'll need. This base has one of the older Quinjet models – they'll need that to get to where they're going. And while she's on her way, she'll need to start calling her contacts. The sooner the better. She has at least two people in mind for this job, although hopefully she'll only need one of them. Hopefully, they're free and not busy right now.

"Maria?" She turns at the door to look back at Natasha. "What happens afterwards?"

This time she holds her tongue long enough to formulate a kinder response than the one she gave Steve. "I haven't decided."

But she has. They both know she has.

If they get Pippa back, Maria can't let this happen again.

–

They have a system for contact if S.H.I.E.L.D. communications get compromised. The protocols exist nowhere but in their heads, which means they can't be hacked – at least, not technologically.

"We're going in."

"The dogs are straining their leashes. I don't know how much longer they'll hold though."

"I just need twenty-four hours one way or the other." Then, because she can't quite resist, she inquires, "How's the Buffy-bot?"

Fury snorts. "The term 'freaking me out' might adequately describe my unease with it, but then again, it might not." He pauses, and in the silence Maria hears the things her boss won't say. "Hunt hard, Hill."

"Believe me, sir, I plan to."

–

Dark hair makes him look...different.

Steve isn't sure it's a good different. The man in the mirror looks dangerous. Or maybe that's the disillusionment in his eyes and the bitter lines around his mouth.

_This is why I didn't want you – any of you – involved in her life!_

Out in the room, Maria's stretched out on the bed, 'resting' with her face to the wall, unmoving, unspeaking, unforgiving. Outside the hotel, in the street, the constant stream of cars and motorcycles and horns buzzes along in the endless heat.

Steve's in here, in the cool and grubby tile of the tiny bathroom, barefoot, shirt off, dyeing his hair and staring at his reflection and wanting nothing so much as to hurt someone. Preferably himself.

If Maria's not entirely right, she's not entirely wrong, either.

Yes, the Avengers made Pippa a target by loving her. Unwitting, perhaps, and with the best of intentions, but a target all the same. And do the intentions matter when a little girl's life is at stake?

He doesn't blame Maria for giving him the cold shoulder on the flight over. If their positions had been reversed, he would never have let her on the mission in the first place.

He knows she doesn't want him here. And he knows what comes after they rescue Pippa.

Stark wanted to push the boundaries, wanted to hunt down whoever was behind this. Pepper and JARVIS stopped him – barely. Pepper locked him out of Stark Industries, and while he argued with her, JARVIS shut down.

Steve's never seen Tony Stark stripped of his technology and power, and gutted to the heart.

He hopes to God he never does again.

And after they've got Pippa back – alive and whole and safe, God-willing – Steve knows what comes next. It was in Natasha's eyes when she looked at Maria as they climbed into the Quinjet. It was in Thor's eyes as they gripped forearms and told each other to be safe. It's been in Maria's eyes every time she looked at him for the last twelve hours, flying across an endless ocean.

"_There are unspoken rules in this business,_" Fury said when Steve called in to say he was going to follow Maria. "_Stay distant. Don't get involved. Don't make targets out of the people you love._" The old man sounded tired, even more worn down than after Coulson's death. "_Sometimes it's easy to remember. And other times you forget. Until you're reminded why._"

_You pushed because you wanted something you shouldn't have had in the first place._

With his hands braced against the sink, Steve looks at his reflection – at the man who stares back at him. Not a man he recognises at first, not instantly a hero. Not even the 'little guy' whom Erskine recruited into the SSR, and turned into Captain America. No, he sees someone else, someone who put a little girl in danger because he wanted something he should have known better than to hope he could have.

Because – irony of ironies – he wanted to be seen as the man rather than the hero.

He'd been spoiled in Peggy and Bucky – two people who knew him as 'Steve' first, and only saw him as Captain America later. Since then – in his days with the USO as the trained monkey, with the SSR chasing Schmidt, in the days after his defrosting and the Chitauri and the Avengers, Steve's never been anything less than Steve Rogers, Captain America.

Wasn't that the problem in his relationship with Sharon? The eternal, undeniable pressure of expectation. Yes, she saw the man, her friend and lover, but he was the hero to her before he was ever Steve.

To Pippa, he was just 'Steve'.

_Innocence,_ Bruce said after Natasha's revelation and disappointment. _She doesn't know who we are; she doesn't care what we can do. She doesnt' see that part of us yet, although someday—someday she will—_

They'll remember what it was like to have that innocent trust – to be seen and loved as ordinary men and women when nobody else around them looked at them as anything less than heroes.

Dear Lord, it's going to hurt when Maria shuts them out of Pippa's life – and her own.

But he can't think of that now. Steve pinches at a strand of his hair, testing the colour. He has to rinse out the dye, clean up, and be ready to go in two hours when it's fully dark. They'll be picked up by Maria's contacts, head out to where Pippa's being held – somewhere in this city, apparently – and rescue her.

And then they go home and the heartbreak starts.

_Don't think of the aftermath now. __Focus on the mission. Get the job done. Get Pippa back, and then let go of what you can't have and learn to deal with it._

As he turns on the tap, he hears something that doesn't sound like a horn or a car, the noises from the next room, or someone clattering down the narrow stairs of this six-storey house. He flips the tap off and listens.

It sounds again - a moan from the next room – like a creature in pain.

He's out through the door and into the narrow room before he thinks about it. On the bed, what was the long line of Maria stretched out has become a curled-up woman, tangled in rough sheets, thrashing wildly against whatever haunts her dreams. Even as Steve crosses the room she twists in the throes of her nightmare. He's not thinking when he grabs her shoulder and tries to shake her awake.

"Maria!"

A gasp and a strangled scream are all the warning he has before his wrist is shoved away and she pushes him into the wall beside the bed. She kicks free of the sheets as he tries to keep his balance and fails, his palms slapping against painted cement to keep himself from falling over completely. Then he doesn't dare move as the click of her gun cocking sounds loud and clear in the sudden quiet within the room.

It's pointed at his heart and, even just woken from sleep and in the clouding dark, her aim is unwavering.

Hysteria bubbles up. Steve wants to laugh – at himself, at the irony of the universe. The last time a woman aimed a gun at him like this and shot, he was already half in love with her.

He passed halfway with Maria a long time ago.

Sometimes Steve wonders about the man who fathered Pippa – an odd sympathy with the faceless, nameless stranger, an obscure jealousy of a man he never knew and never will. Did Maria bemuse and bewilder him, too? Did he wonder that she let him close enough to make love to her? Did he know about the complex, complicated woman she was, or was their relationship casual, off-hand?

Did he know how it felt to have his life in her hands, waiting for her judgement?

Her gaze still seems blurry – the room light's off and it's hard to tell. "Maria?" He's not sure if she sees him, or if she's still stuck in the dream.

Her eyes focus on him. Then she takes a deep breath and lowers the gun. "Steve. God, sorry."

"You were having a nightmare." He watches as she sits heavily down on the edge of the bed. The gun goes back on the bedside table, the safety flicked back on as she relinquishes it. Only then does he feel he can ease himself off the wall and sit down beside her.

"You shouldn't have woken me like that."

"I wasn't thinking."

"I could have shot you." There's no anguish in the statement, just an empty reflection. Almost as if she has nothing left after the tension and strain of the last forty-eight hours.

"You still can if you want," Steve says before he can rein himself in.

Maria gives him a long hard look. "I might hold that in reserve," she says as she looks away. "If we don't get her back."

It's the line of her neck and the break in her voice, the tiredness that shines in her eyes, and the way she's sitting – sagged, as though she's already lost hope.

Steve isn't thinking when he puts his arm around her shoulders, when he presses his cheek against her temple. It's an instinctive move – the need to give human contact, to take human comfort from someone else. Maria doesn't want or need his care – she could survive on her own, without him – but he offers it anyway, because she might accept – and because he wants this, needs this.

She tenses at his touch, stiff and still. _Don't push me away,_ he thinks. _Not yet. Please._ And then she relaxes against him as though she heard his thought, the breath shuddering in and out of her lungs.

"We'll get her back," he says against her hair. "We will."

After a while the jerky breaths even out, like spent tears, leaving her leaning into him as she's never done in all the years Steve's known her.

It terrifies him – her vulnerability. Because out of all the women in the world, all the people that Steve knows, Maria Hill doesn't let herself be vulnerable with anyone.

Then she turns and looks up at him, her face all sharp planes and angles in the harsh light and hazy dark – proud and complicated and beautiful. He can't see her eyes but he can see her expression. His breath catches as she leans in, then shudders out as she brushes her lips along the line of his jaw.

He shivers, but his face tilts down to her as she reaches his chin.

"Steve?"

"Yes," he says, and he doesn't know if he's answering her question or responding to his name, but his mouth finds hers and coherence is lost.

At first the kiss is tentative, learning the shape and flavour of her. But Maria's mouth is bold and unafraid, and Steve takes up the invitation to step up to her, to match her. Then his hand is somehow full of her hair and the curve of her head, and her palm slides down over his chest where his heart pounds wildly.

He slides a hand up under the back of her cotton tee so his fingers caress her spine. She arches a little, and the thin cotton tee does nothing to disguise the curve of her breast against his shoulder, the nub of her nipple under his palm as his hand drops to her breast, cupping, weighing, stroking.

The bright shrill of her cellphone shatters the moment.

Maria's head rears, and her eyes are wide and horrified as she stares into his face. "I'm—Sorry—I didn't—Excuse me."

She pulls from his grasp and reaches for the cellphone vibrating the nightstand. Takes a moment to compose herself. Answers. "This is Hill."

Steve rests his elbows on his knees, glad he's sitting down because he's not sure his legs could hold him right now.

She sounds all business. All agent.

"We can do an hour. Send me the house layout and I'll review it - you know I don't like going in blind. No, we shouldn't need her yet. More likely after. Yes, we're even after this. All right."

She turns the phone over in her hand for a moment after she's hung up, then looks at Steve. Her gaze is steady, as though she hadn't just been kissing him senseless, their hands all over each other. "You'd better wash out the dye. We're meeting in an hour."

And with that she steps over to her duffle and crouches down to take out her tablet. As though her body isn't still buzzing – as Steve's is – as though nothing happened between them, nor ever will.

Steve's fingers curl in on his empty hands. Everything's hot of a sudden – his skin, his cheeks, the ache beneath his breastbone.

He wants to say something – actually, he wants to say a lot of things, and he wants to demand _why me_ and _did it mean anything other than a way to forget._

He's more afraid of the answers she might give.

So he doesn't say anything as he stalks – flees - to the bathroom where the man in the mirror stares back at him with bruised and bitter eyes.

–

Maria can barely breathe in the damp heat of Saigon's night. Her trousers and top are cotton, but the vest buckled over it is heavy armour and she's feeling a little light-headed at the heat..

Across the street, the house looks more or less like the other houses in the street, six storeys tall, painted and gated, with barbed wire around the top of the fence. They've seen dozens of such houses in the streets of Saigon's District 10, and Maria might easily have passed this one without ever guessing Pippa was imprisoned inside.

_Soon, baby,_ she says to her daughter. _We're coming for you._

"_Military,_" says a voice in her earpiece, female, French-accented. "_Or ex-military. It was sold to foreigners several years ago, but has only been used in the last six months._"

"Planning for this," Maria murmurs, standing on the rooftop of the house across the street, staring at the quiet, dark building where her little girl lies curled up in a cold tiled room, scared and alone. So damn close, and yet so far away. "They've been planning for this for a while."

"_Probably_." The woman on the other end of the line sounds indifferent to the perfidy of a child held hostage against someone else's behaviour. Maria knows better. "_I take it you have a plan to keep this from happening again?_"

"Yes."

"_You make me glad I'm not S.H.I.E.L.D., Lieutenant_."

Maria doesn't comment on that. "Are your people in place?"

"_Nearly. We encountered some unexpected technology, but…_" the voice pauses, then continues calmly, "_it's being dealt with. We'll move in on the signal_."

The comm falls silent, and Maria wraps her arms around herself and promises her daughter that there will be blood to pay for this.

"You're sure she's there?"

"Xi'an says she is."

"And you trust her intel?"

She doesn't look down at Steve, crouched in the shadows. She's been careful not to look at him since they left the hotel. "She owes me for helping her locate her siblings a dozen years ago," Maria murmurs. "I don't like her, but I trust her."

The silence between them is underpinned by the steady noise below, full of honking motorcycles, cars, and the occasional van, moving in a steady and endless flow of traffic through the streets of the city.

"Are we going to talk about it?"

Maria doesn't want to. Not now, not ever. Not before they have Pippa back, and not after when he needs to start keeping his distance. But she supposes she owes him this much. "We kissed. It's not the end of the world."

"Or the start of anything?"

She wants to laugh hysterically and she wants to weep. He's become a friend in the years since he first found her outside the communications van, dizzy with the knowledge that she was pregnant. In the last year or two, she started thinking of him as more than just a friend – a co-partner in parenting her daughter.

Maria always considered that the polite way of saying it is that her daughter's in love with him and so is she.

But Steve never said anything to her or made a move towards her that could be construed as anything less than friendship and a shared love for Pippa.

It's telling that it's only when the prospect of her daughter being taken away looms that he wants more from her.

And yes, she comes as a package deal with Pippa, but it's not wrong to be wanted for herself, is it?

"No."

"So that was just a diversion? Something to do while waiting?"

"I don't want you like that." It's truthful enough as it goes. She doesn't want Steve like that – hurried and frantic, in the dark, out of place. A hotel room – she notes the cliché – in desperation for her daughter.

Yes, she would have settled for it, but it's not what she wants.

"Good." Steve says. "Because I don't want you like that, either."

Her breath doesn't quite catch. But the cool cruelty is unexpected – especially from Steve. "Well, then—"

"I don't want you as a pity fuck, Maria. But I want you."

And the way he says it, so calm – too calm – is suddenly more terrifying than any show of temper or visible anger. Because he's angry and he means this – or he thinks he does.

"You..." ..._want me. _She can't get the words out. Saying it might make it real. And this isn't. Can't be.

She's stressed. She's tired. She's overwrought. And she's so close to getting her daughter back and never ever letting her out of her sight again that she can't think what he was trying to say, because he didn't just say..._that_.

Apparently, though, he did.

"I'm in love with you," he says gently. "I have been for a while."

"Because of Pippa."

He huffs with exasperation and disbelief. "I don't know whether to be angry that you'd think that of me," he says, "or that you'd think that of yourself—"

"You think I'm going to take her away—"

Steve interrupts. "I'm not trying to control you, Maria! You'll do what you'll have to for Pippa's sake, and the Avengers will live with it. I just... After this evening – after tonight – whatever happens, I wanted you to know. I love you." She can't see his expression clearly but there might be a twist to his mouth. "Reciprocation isn't required."

Maria stares at him with her cheeks burning up. There's a sudden ache in her chest. Unexpected. "I don't—"

Around the corner, the pop-pop-fizz of fireworks begins – the signal to move in on the house. But as Steve scrambles to his feet and reaches for the grapple shooter, Maria's earpiece buzzes.

"_Red alert! We've been compromised. They're on the move._"

"Red alert," she tells Steve, and his eyes widen, but he doesn't delay.

The grapple is shoots high and fast into the stonework of the other building, and Steve moves briskly towards her. Her arms go around his neck, and his arm slips around her back as they step off the roof edge and plunge towards the ground and the other building – but also across the thirty-yard gap of the street as the grapple reels in.

They're going to miss, they're going to miss, they're going to-

Steve's boots clang on the metal railing of the second-story balcony and his soles scrabble for purchase. There's a moment when the ten yard fall behind pulls at them, dragging them backwards. Somehow, he lunges forward, and they land on the balcony tiles, uneven. Then he twists them both around, angling their momentum so his shoulder takes the brunt of the impact.

It would hurt – they weren't moving slowly – but the instant they're steady on their feet, he pushes her away. "Go get her." And Maria goes because their priority is her daughter and he knows it.

He would do this for anyone, she tells herself.

She shoots the lock in and yanks the dooropen. Beyond, the small living space is crowded with four men in various stages of suiting up.

Two are dead before they realise they're being attacked from behind. Maria wings a third as the fourth calls a warning out the door. She takes a step to the right and snatches up a mug, tossing it at the fourth man as a distraction so she can get her shot lined up.

There's a scream out in the corridor – a shrill, childish shriek of outrage and pain and protest – and Maria's heart clenches. _Pippa!_

Maternal instinct starts her across the room and the bullet clips her side, a glancing blow that spins her sideways, throwing her aim off. The next one will get her in the chest and her daughter— His head explodes in bright blood and brain matter – a headshot. Steve stomps on the knuckles of the downed third man scrabbling for a weapon, and reaches over to haul her up. "Your side—"

"Grazed," she says as she uses his hand and his solidity to propel her up and through the door. "Pippa—"

Her daughter's shrieks haven't stopped, but their cadence is verbal now – screams and protests, a couple of sobbing curses. They're coming from the room at the other end of the hallway and stairwell running through the middle of the narrow buiding.

There's fighting everywhere – upstairs, downstairs, and on the stairwell, both ways. Maria's earpiece buzzes with orders and calls, the voice in it steady and informative. An armoured man lunges at her as she reaches the stairwell and she dodges sideways, eluding his grasp and flattening herself against the wall as she side-steps by, leaving him for Steve.

Behind her, the crack of of fist against flesh is both sickening and satisfying.

Maria plunges through the bead-hanging across the doorway of the last room – a kitchen, barely lit – and slips on something wet and oily, careening to the side. A yelp escapes her lips as she lands on her butt and bashes her head against a cupboard. Maybe it saves her life – several shots echo in the small space before there's a click-click of empty chambers and a curse.

"Mommy!"

Her breath catches, one blur-swift gaze taking in her little girl being hauled up as a human shield - pigtails and big blue eyes in a round, frightened face. "Pippa!"

The man draws a knife from his belt, shining steel. He flips it upright – a slicing grip, not a throwing one.

_Endgame._

Maria can't take a shot with Pippa in the way. Steve's still dealing with the one in the stairwell. And the knife is already coming in for the cut.

"Xi'an, _now_!"

_Too late._

The man yelps with pain. Pippa screams. He drops her like a rag doll. There's blood – God! So much blood! And _something_ crackles through the air like a mental storm, psychic lightning earthing in unprepared and unfamiliar minds.

The man makes an 'urk' noise as Xi'an Coy Manh uses her particular gift to control him for a brief moment in time. Scrambling across the grubby tile to her daughter, Maria gets hold of Pippa's ankle as the man collapses, and pulls her out of the way as the man comes down heavy and hard.

And Pippa fights, screaming, because she's scared and hurt and in pain, and she doesn't know it's her mom who has her.

Maria drags her up, dodges little fists, inexpertly wielded, and her relief at the life in those punches is so strong her voice breaks, "Pippa! Pippa, it's mommy!"

"Mommy?"

And then Maria's back is against the kitchen cabinetry and her arms are full of her daughter. Bloody from the cut that only sliced across her forehead, sobbing with pain and relief, but alive. _Thank you,_ Maria tells the universe, tears stinging her eyes. _Thank you._

Beads clatter noisily, and Steve skids through, managing to keep his feet where Maria didn't. His gaze falls on Pippa and the blood. His face darkens. Two strides and he hauls up the man groaning in the corner, shoving him back against the door with near-effortless strength and a terrifying brutality. Maria hears the door behind the man crack with the force of the slam.

"Who hired you? Who do you work for?"

"_Hill_?"

"We have her," Maria says, quickly. "Situation under control—" Sort of. Steve thumps the man against the back of the door again and the man's limbs thud limply against the wood. "I need you up here ASAP, Xi'an. Steve! _Steve!_"

He turns, and his expression isn't one she ever thought to see on Captain America's face.

_We all cast shadows,_ Phil said in one of her first clear memories of him from her training days. _We're human, after all._

Did Phil include Steve Rogers in that estimation? Maria doesn't know and never will. But what she sees in Steve's face now is not something that she's ever seen in him before.

Not an international icon right now, not a hero, just a man pushed past his limits and struggling against the tide of his own darker nature.

And maybe it says something about her that her daughter is bloody in her arms and his hand is wrapped around another man's throat and the words that bubble up in her mouth have everything and nothing to do with this moment, but Maria isn't going to think about that.

She needs to tip the balance with something that matters, so she shifts her arms and nudges Pippa's head up.

"She's okay," she says to Steve, letting him see Pippa move for herself, not dead, not seriously hurt. "You can stop."

Pippa is whimpering in her arms, the cut is still bleeding, and she seems to be cradling her arm, but she looks through her tears and sees. "Steve?"

He drops the man in a heap, takes two steps towards her with his arms outstretched, and stops as though seeing his hands for the first time. The beads at the door rattle as Xi'an pushes them back and takes in the tableau in one long glance.

Steve begins to turn and look at the man lying limp and unmoving in the corner.

"Steve!" Maria uses every ounce of authority she has in her at this moment to draw his attention. "I need you to see to Pippa. Please."

He doesn't quite fall to his knees beside her, but it's close. And Pippa makes _nononono_ _mamamama _noises as Maria draws away.

"I'm here, baby, I'm not going anywhere. Steve will look after you."

"Hey," he says, and his voice is hoarse. "We've been looking for you so hard..."

It takes some doing to detach Pippa, and Maria doesn't want to let her daughter go anymore than her daughter wants to let go. But this is necessary, and she's the only one who can do it. And Steve needs this – her trust, her daughter's trust, the anchor of belief that will hold him fast at this turning point.

As she gets up, Maria lets her fingers brush his cheek, feels him turn his head a little, prolonging the contact for just a moment. Then she walks over to look down at the man who tried to kill her daughter.

Steve broke his neck, but he's still alive.

His eyes stare up at her, terror and panic etched into his face.

Xi'an is crouched down by the unmoving body. "Paralysis, from the neck down," she says succinctly. "You wish his employer?"

"Everything he knows."

"Not much time to get it. The cops will be on their way – our fireworks didn't quite hide the gunfire." The Vietnamese-born woman closes her eyes, and a moment later the man groans. "He is yours."

Interrogation is never a nice business; Maria has never claimed to be a nice person. Still, this is less fraught than the usual demand for answers – the uncertainty of confession under duress, the need to strip the informant down to their bare bones and then question them again – a process that can take hours, if not days.

With Xi'an Coy Manh in control of his mind, this interrogation has no lies and no deceptions, and takes all of two minutes. Names, contacts, everything the guy knows pours out of his mouth until Maria has what she needs to track the perpetrator down.

"Kill him or leave him?"

Maria looks down at him, then over where Steve is climbing to his feet with Pippa tearful in his arms, a bandage over the cut on her forehead and her arm bound up as though it's been broken.

"With a knife," she tells Xi'an. "No more shooting." And she doesn't want Pippa to see this.

Xi'an tilts her head. "No knife needed."

And, just like that, the man ceases breathing.

Maria winces, but meets the challenge in Xi'an's gaze before turning away.

Pippa nearly leaps at her from Steve's arms. And Maria hisses lightly at the kick she gets in bruised ribs, hugs her daughter tight, and promises that she's never letting go. There'll be nightmares for both of them after this, she has no doubt. Still, for the moment, it's enough to have Pippa alive and clinging to her.

"Mommy!" Pippa sobs into her shoulder. "I hurt! I wanna go home!"

"We're going, baby. We're going." Maria meets Steve's gaze over her daughter's shoulder, the shadows playing across his face. "You ready?"

He meets her eyes – just a moment. Then his gaze falls away. "Yeah."

She'd touch him, reassure him, but her arms are full of her daughter and they need to get out of here fast.

"Then let's go home."

******tbc**


	6. Chapter 6

**NOTES: **The denouement. With the conclusion to follow.

**And Baby Makes Eight**

- **Part VI** -

"You want to do a Keyser Soze?"

"Modified. Tag and clip only, no deaths. I want a warning, not a blood-feud."

"That's taking some very specialised skills."

"Have Monica do it."

"You know how she feels about S.H.I.E.L.D."

"This isn't S.H.I.E.L.D. business. Besides she owes me."

"Is there anyone who _doesn't_ owe you?"

"Plenty of people."

"And you can't call in the favour yourself because...?"

"I want her in a good mood. Talking to me isn't going to get her there."

"I cannot owe you this much, Maria"

"Get Monica to do the job and we're even."

"If you say." There's a pause on the other end of the line. "I never thought to see Captain America take a level in Dark Side."

It's not a question. Maria's not obligated to give an answer. But she knows what Xi'an is saying beneath the statement. The woman may not be S.H.I.E.L.D., but she – as much as any of her kind – knows the danger of a man gone to the dark with the fervour of belief in his own absolute rightness.

Steve Rogers gone to the dark would be far more dangerous than Erik Lensherr ever managed to be. Not just the symbol of a hero, but the soul and spirit of a good man with the strength of character and will and not just of body. People believe that he's does what's right – and he does, or tries to.

But he's not perfect. None of them are.

_We all cast shadows_, the memory of Phil murmurs. _We're human, after all._

Maria looks over to where her daughter is sitting, curled up in Steve's lap. His arms are wrapped around her protectively, his face downturned to her drowsing head, guilt etching lines about his eyes.

It's the guilt that makes the difference in Steve.

"It's under control," she tells Xi'an.

And it is.

Yes, Steve Rogers casts shadows, but Maria doesn't fear them.

–

Steve sits in the dry cold of the safehouse's air-conditioned chill and doesn't shiver.

He still remembers the feel of the man's throat in his hand, the incandescent rush of rage that took him when he saw Maria cradling a bloody little body in her arms. At that moment, he'd wanted the man's death – but not a clean one.

There was pleasure in that moment – a satisfaction in the way the man flopped, in the terror in the kidnapper's face. For those few seconds—minutes? – Steve would have hit him again and again, beyond thought or reason, beyond fairness or necessity.

Yes, the man had to be dealt with. But not like that.

The beserker rage? That's not him. Thor and Henry and T'Challa, yes. Carol, occasionally. Bruce, certainly. The others tend to go brutally cold – Natasha, Tony, and Clint in particular, although Heather has her moments - but not Steve.

He's good at being a soldier - at carrying out missions, at killing. He regrets the need for it, but he does it anyway. He wants a mission completed, and sometimes that requires death. He doesn't take pleasure in death, or even satisfaction in the kill.

He did tonight.

Shooting the kidnappers wasn't enough. Once in close quarters he used his fists and his anger. Flesh under his fingers, an Adam's apple bobbling beneath his palm, and the fear shining bright in the blue eyes as the man understood just how helpless he was.

It makes Steve sick to think of it now, after the rush is gone, after the adrenaline has faded.

God, what did he become tonight?

"Steve?" In the bed, Pippa is watching him, her big eyes oddly owlish. They gave her painkillers, and she should be asleep, but she's been fighting it for the last hour. "Why are your hands shaking? Are you cold?"

Steve pulls a smile together and closes the hands he was staring at. "I am a bit cold, yes. No, don't—" But she's already wriggling out from under the sheets. "Pippa—"

"Cuddle?" She lifts her arms – well, _arm_ – and looks winsome. And scared.

He feels like he shouldn't touch her, shouldn't soil her with his hands. But the ache in his chest demands satisfaction, and the knowledge that his time with Pippa is limited presses hard.

"Okay. But you stay in bed and I'll sit with you."

Sitting with him is not what she has in mind – and she has a very determined little mind. Pippa climbs into his lap and curls up against his chest, forcing him to put his arms around her and ease himself up so he's sitting back on the pillows of the bed.

The hollow in his belly eases back a little as he holds her. But the future looms large and empty before him, devoid of her and Maria both.

He looks over at Maria, who's leaning against the frame of the open door, arms folded, her profile turned away into the corridor so they can't hear her conversation. Pippa didn't want her mom out of her sight, so the compromise was that Maria wouldn't leave the room.

On the other hand, she didn't seem to want Pippa or Steve hearing whatever she was doing.

He's not sure if that's because she doesn't trust him, or simply her instinctive secretiveness regarding any S.H.I.E.L.D. business that's rather more greyscale than whitehat.

"Steve?" Pippa tilts her head back to look up at him, and now there's a drowsy solemnity beneath the white bandage.

"Yes?"

"Why didn't you come sooner? I waited for you."

"We did. We tried." Her hair is so soft and fine under his fingers, dark with a curl that's a bit too vigourous to have come from Maria – a trace of her unknown father. "But the people who took you away – we didn't know where they were or how to find you. So we had to find you first before we could come and get you."

Pippa snuggles closer. "It was cold. I cried lots. And my arm hurt all the time." She sniffles a little bit. "I wish you'd come sooner."

"Your mom and I wish we'd come sooner, too."

Those little blue eyes look up at him again. "Your hair is dark now."

"I dyed it."

"Why?"

"Because everyone around here has dark hair and I wanted to fit in."

"Oh." She lifts her head to contemplate him for a moment. Then she settles back down on his chest, her cheek resting over his heart. "It looks like mine now."

It chokes him up a little, and he lowers his lips to her hair. "Yeah. It is."

She's silent for a few seconds, then her voice drifts up, soft and sleepy. "I'm glad you came."

Steve has nothing to say to that – nothing that won't tear him apart. He just keeps holding her carefully, as though she's fragile. And she is. So small and trusting, and not his to hold anymore – not that she ever was.

He's not sure it won't break him to let go.

_I don't need you endangering my daughter any more than you already have!_

And in losing Pippa, he'll lose Maria, too.

Oh, he'll see Maria at work with S.H.I.E.L.D., with the Avengers, a commander and liaison. But she'll withdraw from their lives at best, becoming nothing more than a stranger he once loved, and Pippa will grow up never remembering that she played with gods and heroes as a child, and loved them because she never knew to worship or fear them.

The murmur of Maria's voice stops, and he looks up as she finishes the call, and comes into the room, closing the door behind her. Quiet as she tries to be, though, Pippa still rouses, sharp and anxious. "Mommy?"

"I'm here, baby." She stands beside the bed and bends over to kiss the soft cheek and brush back the wispy curls. And Steve feels the emptiness dig its claws a little deeper amidst the heavy weight of guilt and despair.

They're not his and they never were.

He thought he'd made his peace with that.

"There's a Quinjet twenty minutes out," she tells him, straightening, but not moving away. Standing close enough that her hand can rest on Pippa's leg, reassurance that she's still here. Close enough for him to want to reach for her hand, to tuck her in on his other side and have her warm against his back, with her chin resting on his shoulder.

He can't.

_I don't love you._ She'd been in the middle of saying that before the alarm was triggered.

Steve tucks the pain away now, puts it somewhere else to be cradled later, and focuses on what she's just said. If a Quinjet is coming then maybe… "Natasha?"

"No." She frowns down at Pippa, her expression troubled by the mention of the Avengers. And Steve suddenly wants the Quinjet to get lost, to go missing, to leave them here just a little bit longer, stolen time before reality and the world intrudes. "Steve-"

"I know," he says before she can remind him. "We have to keep our distance after this."

Maria tilts her head a little. "I was going to say, 'Thank you.'"

"For what? Losing it? Going beserk while interrogating a source of information?" He doesn't mean to say that, certainly not as bitter as it comes out.

And she's watching him, a troubled look on his face. "For helping save my daughter. For helping _with_ my daughter." She hesitates. "For being you."

He doesn't know how to answer her gratitude. "I saw the blood and I thought—I went a little…crazy in there."

"Yes."

He looks at her and thinks that only Maria could say that so calmly – as though he hasn't failed her or the shield or what he's meant to be.

"What I did— It's not— That's not—" Steve takes a deep breath. "That's not what Captain America should be."

Maria looks at him for a long, silent moment. "No," she says gently. "Maybe not. But it's what her father would do."

Steve is caught between stabbing pain and aching loss. She's never spoken of Pippa's father before – not willingly. To speak of it here, now—

He doesn't want to hear why she doesn't love him, why she can't. He doesn't want to hear about a man who'll never cradle his daughter the way Steve does, but who holds Maria's heart the way Steve never will. He can't do this now, face this now. Not tonight. Not like this.

And yet...amidst the clutching grief, he wants to know more about the man she respected enough to let into her bed, liked enough to keep his child, and cared about enough to go back to his memorial every year.

She's never spoken of him before to anyone – not that Steve knows about – but she wants to tell him now.

It's not love, but it's a trust she's never given anyone else – this part of her and Pippa's past. And Steve wants to be worthy of that, even if he can't have more. She doesn't want him, and he won't push that; but he loves her, so he'll take whatever she can give.

So he takes a long breath and lets it out, and wishes his throat didn't feel so raw. "What was he like?" When Maria looks blankly at him, he qualifies, "Pippa's father? I mean. You never talk about him."

Maria continues staring at him, a faint flush crawling across her cheeks. "I—Steve—I wasn't talking about him now."

It takes him a moment to realise what she's giving him – forgiveness, of a sort. Kind understanding. An acknowledgement of what Pippa's been to him, what her daughter has meant to him. The reassurance that he's not a monster.

"Thank you," he says, and wishes his voice wasn't so hoarse. "I—That means—" He doesn't have the words for it, doesn't have the speech. He just looks down at Pippa, curled warmly against his heart.

When he looks up, Maria's watching him, a pensive expression in her eyes.

He has nothing to lose anymore, and she needs to hear it again.

"What I said before—about being in love with you—I meant it."

"Steve—"

"It's not about Pippa. I know you don't believe that." Her disbelief is in her eyes, in the way she opened her mouth to tell him he's wrong or mistaken. "It's still true. You don't have to love me back. I know you can't—" He stops himself before he starts babbling. And from the look in her eyes she wants to say something and he should shut up and let her say it.

Even if it's that she never wants him to touch her or her daughter again.

"I don't—" She looks down at Pippa. "I couldn't handle it if—if she became collateral damage."

Steve reaches out.

Her hand is cold when he takes it, but she doesn't pull away when he kisses the knuckles, nor when she flattens her palm against his cheek and turns his face into her hand. She doesn't pull away when he tugs her in so his arm can slip around her waist and his forehead rests against her shoulder.

He can't see her face. That's deliberate. But Steve can hear her heartbeat, can feel the way she shudders as she doesn't cry – not Maria. And if he could he'd fight her pain and the fear she hides away, but he can't and the truth is she wouldn't let him anyway.

He's going to miss her. He's going to miss Pippa. But he can have this now, and maybe on the way home, if she lets him hold her – not enough, not as much as he wants, but as much as she can give. As much as she can afford with Pippa's life in the balance.

It's not what he wants, but he understands.

Her hand strokes over his head once, fingers curling at his nape. And Steve lets himself believe it means something, even if it's just for the moment, just here, just now. He can have this moment and if it won't be enough, then he'll still live without it because he has to, because they need him to.

It's a good moment, however temporary.

They stay like that until the call comes from the Quinjet that it's on the approach to the airfield.

Then they gather up a sleepy little Pippa and go home.

–

Sitting on the kitchenette countertop – hardly used since Maria's not much of a cook – Clint watches the argument but stays well out of it. Natasha leans back against the counter, her hands curled around the edge. She seems calm on the surface, but the flex of her hands betrays her tension.

Clint's feeling the same edginess. There's enough temper running through this room for things to get nasty. Only the fact that Maria's trying to get Pippa to sleep is stopping war from breaking out among the Avengers.

He's only said this once to Natasha, and once to Maria, both times long ago, back in the earliest days. _The Council weren't wrong about us. The miracle isn't that we defeated Loki; the miracle is that we worked together long enough to make it happen._

Right now, it's come down to Stark and Bruce as the respective leaders of the factions – although really it comes down to Stark and everyone else.

"No," Tony is saying, stubborn to the last, "I don't see the need—"

"Tony—"

"I'm not going to walk away from her, Bruce. I won't do it."

"Not even for Pippa's safety?"

"And how is walking away from her going to make things any safer? Really?" Tony looks around the room at them all. "No, I'm serious. How is it going to make a difference?"

"If we do not mark her as a target, then there will be little reason for people to go after her," Thor says, standing in the shadows over by the windows. He's been – as Stark says – a dark little thundercloud since he got back from Asgard.

Natasha related what Maria said. In anger, yes, but with the sting of truth.

Clint knows the guidelines of involvement for S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. They're not rules _per se,_ because the organisation recognises there's no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem of interpersonal relationships. Still, he and Natasha walked that line for years before Loki, New York, and the Avengers. They thought it best, safest.

Being Avengers rather than S.H.I.E.L.D. gave them that opportunity – that immunity – yet Clint never let it matter that doing the same with Pippa might entail a price – not enough to step away.

_Red in our ledger._

They're just lucky that one of those entries isn't written in Pippa's blood.

"Look," says Tony with his trademark forcefulness, "We're not going to stop caring about what happens to Pippa just because Maria says we walk out of this room tonight and never come back. She's a target because she means something to us, not because she's in our proximity. Being in our proximity is probably the main reason she's never been targeted before! And, without us, who does she have to protect her or keep an eye on her?"

"We should be targeting the people who targeted _her_," Hank Pym mutters, his hand a fist on the table. He turns to Steve. "You didn't get anything from the attack?"

"No." Steve has been quiet ever since Maria took Pippa away for bed. Now he's staring at the coffee table as though it holds all the answers to their predicament. Other than one intervention with Tony – about as successful as any of them, he's been subdued – even for Cap. "Maria and Xi'an dealt with the leader."

"While you stood by and wrung your hands?"

Tony has a faintly savage note in his voice, but Steve doesn't react. The silence is uncharacteristic. Out of all of them, Clint would have expected Steve to side with Tony – to fight not to lose Pippa. Then again, maybe seeing what nearly became of her has changed his perspective.

Cap does what's right, even when it hurts – that's what makes him Cap.

"No." It's a quiet negative, heavy with the weight of something that goes beyond anger. "They dealt with him while I held Pippa to keep her from seeing what a man looks like after I've broken his neck in rage."

Somehow it's worse that he says it so quietly.

It's not that Cap's never killed before, or lost his temper, or bloodied his hands. They're Avengers, not saints. And there's no doubt the leader of the kidnappers deserved what was coming to him. But 'broken his neck in rage' is a very different beast to 'shot him in a fight'.

"Steve—" Bruce begins.

"I only saw the blood and her body – Maria was holding her – and—"

Steve takes a deep breath and looks up at Tony. And maybe it's the hair that makes the difference, or maybe it's the look in his eyes which says this man is not feeling 'nice' or 'good' or 'conciliatory' right now, and he will go through anyone and anything to do what he thinks needs to be done – as he broke a man's neck.

"If Maria wants us to walk away from Pippa, then we will walk away. What you leave to her is your own business, Tony, but if Maria says to leave Pippa alone, then we do so. All of us." He looks around the room, meeting gazes one by one. "Are we understood?"

"No." Tony's not going to let this go, and Clint wants to wince, because what he's seeing is not two team-mates disagreeing, but two men about to get into a bloody, bruising verbal fight that will leave aching, painful scars. "No, we are _not_ understood. I will _not_ back away. I will _not_ give her up! And you can take that and your precious boy-scout guilt and shove it—"

"Tony," Bruce interrupts, jerking his head at the entryway to Maria and Pippa's personal quarters, where Maria has just stepped through.

"Well," she says giving the room a crisp, sweeping glance as she puts her hands on her hips. "I see we're in the middle of a 'spirited discussion'."

"You aren't going to take Pippa away from us," Tony says, and beneath the belligerence, Clint can hear the note of deperation that terror has wrung from the usually inimitable technocrat. "I won't let you."

Wrong words to say; wrong way to say it. Clint winces. Pushing Maria is usually a bad idea; she tends to react unpredictably.

Witness her prompt trip to Asgard to recruit Heimdall to find Pippa.

"Would that be like not letting anyone hurt Pippa?" Maria inquires, and this time Clint's not the only one to wince. "Like not letting any harm come to her? Because you – all of you – did a great job of that. And so did I."

"Maria—"

She holds up a hand to halt Bruce's interjection. "We're going to have this out, Banner. You made her a target – all of you. I said that, and I meant that, and it's no less true just because you don't like it."

"Well, tell us what you really think, Lieutenant," Bruce says, and Clint watches the bitter lines about his mouth dig a little deeper and wonders just how close they are to having the Hulk in the building.

Well, they already have the Hulk in the building. He's just under control right now.

Will he still be under control after Maria lays down the law?

If Maria's considered this, she's not showing it as she surveys them all. "What I really think is that Pippa would have been safer not knowing any of you – being considered nothing more than the daughter of another S.H.I.E.L.D. agent."

"But she's not just any agent's daughter," Steve says quietly, his eyes hungry on Maria's face. This will be hard on all of them, but Clint knows Natasha's worried about Steve. Tony will find his outlets – although it might be a case of God help the Earth – but Steve is something else. "She's _your_ daughter."

"And I, as her mother, have the right and responsibility to keep her safe."

"Safety is an illusion, Maria," Natasha points out, gently, and the child who became the assassin speaks through the woman's voice. "You can't protect her from everything."

"No," Maria agrees. "I can't. But we like to keep our fictions as long as they'll hold, and sometimes way past their use-by date." She looks around, meeting everyone's gaze. " We've had five years to pretend that your interest in my daughter wasn't going to come back and cost us – and we're just lucky that it wasn't her life."

"You keep using that word, 'we'," Tony snaps. "You do know that it doesn't mean what you think it means?"

"I'm taking my share of blame for this," is the reply. "I could have run harder—"

"You could have tried."

"I could have drawn hard lines and stuck to them. I didn't. I've paid for that. And so have you." Maria looks around at them. "So has Pippa."

"You want us to keep our distance," Clint says for all of them. He shouldn't push the point, but why prolong the agony? And something's not quite right, like a sighting that's slightly off. Maria doesn't do explanations; she gives orders and expects them to be followed.

"I want you to keep your distance." Her gaze meets Clint's, slides over to Natasha, and then across Thor over by the windows before dropping down to Steve. "Unfortunately, it's a little late for that. She's already a target and she's not going to stop being one anytime soon. As much as I'd like to bundle her up in cotton wool and run," and she gives a little grimace, "I'm not going to."

Clint isn't sure he's heard right at first. Neither, it seems are the others. Tony's glass comes down on the bar top with a thump, and Maria continues.

"The truth is that I can't protect Pippa from everything, and given the world we live in at S.H.I.E.L.D., I'm not sure I should. However," and her voice goes hard again, "I've taken measures to keep her safe – in so far as she can be kept 'safe'. If you want to continue as a presence in my daughter's life, I expect you to do the same." She looks at Tony. "Do you understand _that_, Stark?"

Tony doesn't answer immediately. Instead, he takes a drink, as though he doesn't have all eyes in the room on him. Then he sets the glass down. "And do you plan to hold the threat of taking Pippa away over our heads every time we misbehave, Lieutenant?"

"Tony—" Thor protests.

"I think it's a valid question. She's got the upper hand when it comes to Pippa, after all. We can pour whatever we want of ourselves into that little girl, but Maria holds all the cards as Pippa's mother."

"That is different—"

"Is it?" Stark doesn't look away from Maria.

Maria smiles suddenly – a faint curve of her lips. "You know, I always figured you for a dilettante when it came to my daughter, Stark. So long as she was young and adorable, she'd be another person whose life you could dabble in before you lost interest and forgot her. Another female victim of Tony Stark – used, left behind, forgotten. What's the harm and who cares anyway?"

"Maria—"

"No," Stark holds up a hand. "It's fair. Wrong, but fair. What changed?"

"Nothing." Maria doesn't mince words. "I'm still not entirely convinced that someday you won't decide that she's more effort than the great and powerful Tony Stark can be bothered to expend. However." And here she sighs. "My daughter believes you're her family – all of you, God help me. So my question is whether you're going to be the family Pippa believes you are and step up to the plate, or whether you're going to run and hide now that she needs you to protect her?"

–

No sooner have the elevator doors closed than Tony pipes up. "Does anyone else feel like singing, '_We Got Annie_'?"

Deep in his core, Bruce feels the Hulk roar with laughter.

**tbc**


	7. Chapter 7

**And Baby Makes Eight**

- **Part VII** -

"I'm sorry," Maria says, her best efforts at restraining a struggling child lost when Steve opens the door of his apartment and Pippa flings herself at his knees. "She wouldn't sleep—"

It's four in the morning and they've had a dreadful night. Pippa won't settle, and Maria doesn't blame her daughter after the kidnapping – but she's tired and at the end of the tether. She hasn't slept – not properly, not restfully – in nearly half a week. And now Pippa won't sleep – won't rest, won't relax.

Steve hoists Pippa up into his arms. "Keeping your mom up, are you?"

Pippa gives him a trenchant look and wraps her good arm around his neck, tucking her head on his shoulder, careful of the bandage across her head. Maria finds a moment to envy her daughter as Steve waves her in, then closes the door quietly behind them.

"Are you okay?" His hand brushes her arm, and the expression in his eyes is something rather warmer than mere pleasure. Maria has to tell herself it's okay not to pull away, that it's not wrong to want to lean into his touch, but nevertheless something in her expression seems to make him drop his hand. "I'm glad you came to me." Then he winces. "I mean—That sounded better in my head."

Laughter helps. Oh God, it helps so much! And Pippa opens one eye drowsily to check what her mom is laughing at, then closes it again and snuggles in. "I— I thought—in Vietnam—she fell asleep for you—"

"It's fine." He adjusts Pippa in his arms, and looks to Maria. "Sofa or bed?"

He's Steve Rogers. The playfulness is most likely unintentional. Probably.

Maria's answer is serious. "Bed."

Startled hunger flares in his eyes before he tells himself she doesn't mean it like that. His smile is gentle, but there's a bittersweetness to it. "Okay, bed it is."

It hurts to see the hope reined in with such careful control. And it gives her a terrifying thrill to know that she has this power over him.

"Steve." He turns and her hands curl in the cuffs of her long-sleeved sleeping shirt. "I—What you said—in Vietnam—"

"Is still true here."

"I know. Steve—" She wants to look away, but she owes him this truth eye to eye– and all the other truths behind it. "I trust you. With Pippa. And," she says, because she needs to say this much, "with me."

He says nothing for a moment, his face careful and earnest, open and beautiful. Will he understand that this is as far as she can come for the moment? That there are lines in her head and she doesn't have the ability to cross them yet, but she's trying?

Then Steve holds out his free hand. "Come to bed."

Maria pops her hand from her sleeve and slides her fingers into his. A quiet command fades the lights behind them as they go in to bed.

They sleep with Pippa curled between them, finally calm, and wake in daylight to each other.

–

Nick didn't expect she'd show any particular reaction to the report. But he watches her as he leans back in his chair and folds his hands over his chest.

Maria lays the tablet down and looks him in the eye. "It seems straightforward enough, sir. Someone has a grudge and the resources to carry it out."

"Rather significant resources given that over half of the attacks were done under cover of darkness in secured compounds, and the other half were achieved in broad daylight without any collateral damage." Nick lifts an eyebrow. "Don't you think that's odd, Lieutenant?"

"I think it shows a great deal of skill on the part of the attackers."

She's good. She neither confirms that there was a single attacker, nor twitches so much as a single muscle on her face as she looks back at him, unflinching. Which is precisely how Nick knows what she did. What he wants to know – without actually forcing a confession from her – is who she used to get the job done.

It's no skin off his back – although he has his suspicions – but he'd like to know.

He regards her. "How's Pippa doing?"

"She's okay during the day so long as there's someone around. At night... We're dealing with it."

Which is as much as she'll say and, really, as much as Nick needs to know. It's under control, things are being handled.

"When did you plan to start coming back in to work?"

"I'll go through some of the backlog this morning, but I plan to be out of here after lunch."

Nick makes a mental note to get to the daycare before lunchtime. "Kindergartens? Didn't Stark enrol her in that International institute?" As well as just about every other educational program in existence for the children of high-profile parents.

Her lips press together. "Yes, sir."

"Stark being a nuisance? More than usual?"

"We're dealing with it."

"Right." Nick thinks about that plural, thinks about what this woman is capable of, thinks about the things the report said and didn't say. He taps his finger by the tablet screen. "Can you live with this, Lieutenant?"

She knows what he means. "I get a choice not to live with it?"

"There's always a choice. You just may not like the consequences."

"I can live with this."

And the men who conspired to kidnap Pippa will live with the reminder that the little girl might be a useful hostage to the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D., but her mother is a bear who will stop at nothing to protect her cub.

He's not going to ask about the contingency plans that the Avengers are laying in around Pippa. There are things he doesn't need to know and doesn't want to know. And S.H.I.E.L.D. is in the process of re-evaluating its protocols regarding families and the protection of people that its personnel and agents hold dear.

But only so much can be done.

"Right." Nick sighs and leans back in his chair. He has a few moments more before he has to go out and attend a Council meeting. And he still has a powerful curiosity about at least one thing. "How's Rogers doing after Vietnam?"

There might be a slight narrowing of her eyes, but her answer is steady. "So far as I know, he's fine."

"Is he having nightmares, too?"

"I suspect we all are. It could have gone either way."

Nick doesn't quite chuckle at the careful avoidance of an answer that can be used against her. Luckily, he has enough practice to keep his amusement from his face. "All right, Hill," he concedes. "Just remember that what happens after this is known in the business as 'consequences'."

"Like Monica Chang, sir?"

Oh, she's _good_. "Touché, Lieutenant."

–

Maria wins the argument about the education system vs. private tuition. Stark wins the argument about Pippa's fifth birthday party.

–

_drawing by Philippa Carmelita Hill (age 5) brought home from kindergarten:_

_[This picture is available at the following location - add a '.' in every space]_

**farm9 staticflickr com/8522/8543595951_61939840eb_o png**

"Why am I wider than everyone else except the Hulk? And Bruce is in there twice!"

"Maybe you should just be grateful you're not the great and powerful floating head, Tony."

–

"Shouldn't you be taking photos with Tony and Pepper?" Clint asks when Pippa climbs up on the wall beside him. Unlike Tasha, they don't need him for the bridal party, so he's taking a moment out from the madness.

"Mama said we should take a selfie," she says and pulls a phone with a Hulk case out of the little white string bag that matches her satin-striped dress. She pulls Clint's sunglasses down from the top of his head, and puts an over-large pair on herself.

Bossy little thing.

Clint frowns over the top of his sunglasses. "Aren't these Tony's?" And, yes, over by the cherry tree in bright blossom, Stark is patting himself down with a faint frown.

Pippa may be five years old, but the look on that face is definitely a smirk.

–

"Philippa's imagination is very vivid and her artwork is excellent for a girl her age..."

"But?" Maria prompts.

The teacher seems a little nervous. "Well, the children were asked to paint themselves and a friend. And Pippa drew this."

It doesn't take much interpretation to work out that the big green thing with the black hair is the Hulk. Even if he appears to be on all fours. And, possibly, has a flowing black tail.

If it's not a tail, Maria is going to have a long talk with Bruce.

Across the top of the drawing is painstakingly printed, HULK PONY.

–

One winter morning, Bruce finds Thor standing in the shadowy corridor leading to one of the sparring rooms, smiling as Natasha takes Pippa, Maria, Jane, and Pepper through the slow and steady movements of a _tai-chi _stretch.

Pippa's balance is wobbly but she doesn't give up.

–

"What did you do at school today, baby?"

"Mikey wanted to play Avengers." Pippa rolls her eyes as only a five year old can. "But it was silly. They just screamed a lot and ran around in circles. And Billy tried to kiss Jojo when she didn't want, but I kicked him like Tasha showed me and said he was a stupid little bully and he stopped."

Steve makes a choked noise over by the stove where he's cooking an actual dinner for them, and when Maria looks his way, his shoulders are shaking.

Maria supposes she should be glad she didn't get a call from the school. As yet, her daughter hasn't started any fights with other children. Maria doubts that's going to last. Pippa is forthright, bossy, has a strong sense of justice, and no fear of saying it like it is.

_Can't imagine where she got those traits from,_ was Fury's sardonic comment.

"So," Maria asks, half-resigned, half-terrified of the answer, "if they were playing Avengers, who did _you_ play?"

If it wasn't Steve – and there'd be stiff competition to play Steve – Maria figures it was Carol or Sif. Most likely Sif since the last time the Asgardian goddess was around, Pippa followed her like a big-eyed shadow, utterly entranced and completely awed.

But Pippa beams over the rim of her juice cup. "I played _you_, Mommy."

–

Maria forbade the Avengers from turning up to parent-teacher night.

That worked out about as well as expected.

**fin**

**Original Prompt**:

_After the Battle of Manhattan, Maria Hill finds out she's pregnant, and, in light of everything that's happened (Coulson, aliens, etc) decides to keep the baby and she somehow convinces Fury to install a day care center on the Helicarrier so she can continue her duties. The Avengers are immediately smitten with the baby, who grows up with an incredibly eccentric group of aunts and uncles. Go wild with the cute, anon._

_Bonuses_  
-the baby is named Phillipa (called Pippa), everyone has feels over this  
-Clint and Natasha teach the kid, when they're old enough, knife throwing, archery, and other dangerous skills  
-HULK GOOD WITH CHILDREN. LIKE MANY SAME THINGS.  
-Steve and Thor are naturally the best with the baby  
-Pepper has to teach Tony how to play with kids, Tony fears she will get broody and want one of their own, instead he's the one that gets baby fever and starts picking out names (maybe he gets caught hanging out in those baby name message boards?)

**NOTES**: The original prompt that started this story was from the avengerskink community on LJ. I thought it would be a couple of thousand words and some cute. It turned into nearly 30K with a great deal of angst and crisis and consequences and ALL THE FEELS.

I hope you enjoyed it, and thank you for reading!


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